Al Schneider's Rocky Mountains Plant Descriptions

Streamside Bluebells
Mertensia ciliata
Borage family (Boraginaceae)

Mertensia ciliata often grows in patches covering large areas and plants in bloom fill the air with a very appealing soft scent. Numerous species of Mertensia are found in the in the Colorado Rockies. The flowers are edible raw and the plant has several reported medicinal uses. M. ciliata is a robust plant growing to a height of 4", often in very large colonies. There are several relatively short bluebells in the area of this app but their precise identification is debated; some botanists separate them in one way and others in another way. See M. lanceolata. "Ciliata" is from the Latin for "small hair" and botanically now means "fringed with small hairs."


©2009 Keir Morse

Description

, 1-4' tall, with blue, tubular flowers hanging in numerous clusters from the top of stems. Blue-green leaves are along stem, hairy on margins (), pointed, oval to . Mature flowers turn pink and the may protrude from the flower. Plants commonly grow in large patches in moist sites.

Field Marks

Tall, clump-forming plant with blur-green leaves and clusters of blue-purple hanging flower tubes.

© Al Schneider

style -- This is a long and thread-like structure that connects the stigma with the ovary. A flower may have a single style, or several of them.

A perennial plant lives and blooms for many years.

A herb is a plant whose stems die back to the ground in the winter.

ciliate -- fringed with hairs

alternate -- leaves alternate along the main stem and are attached singly.

lanceolate -- Lance-shaped. Long, wider in the middle.