Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare)

or Lus na Nathrach in Gaelic

This striking plant is very popular with bees, butterflies and moths...

Strangely it is rarely referred to in wildlife gardening books but as you can see it is really popular with insects...

It is quite vigorous and can flower right into Autumn. It loves well-drained sunny sites, in fact it will happily self-seed into dry gritty pathways, without becoming a difficult weed.

In Tess Darwin's The Scots Herbal (Mercat Press, 1997), Viper's Bugloss is included among the species found in a c15th-c16th Gaelic medical manuscript, where it is recommended as a vitamin boost after blood-letting*.

You can buy this species as a packet or you can find it in our Dry Mix of plants happy in free-draining soil, our Annual & Biennial Mix and our Coastal Mix of plants that can tolerate salt and free draining soil and our Bird, Bug & Butterfly Mix of native wildflowers that will encourage wildlife in your garden.

*although traditonally used in herbal medicine we would not recommend eating any of the plants that you can grow from our seeds...

Echium vulgare, June 2007, Fiona Guest. Do not reproduce without permission

                                                  
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