Borage.

Botanical name: 

Borago.

Borago -species contain livertoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Read more here. -Henriette

A ROUGH plant common in our gardens, with great leaves, and beautiful blue flowers. It grows two feet high; the stalks are thick, round, fleshy, and juicy; and covered with a kind of hairiness so sturdy that it almost amounts to the nature of prickles. The leaves are oblong, broad, very rough, and wrinkled; and they have the same sort of hairiness, but less stiff than that of the stalk; the largest grow from the root, but those on the stalks are nearly of the same shape. The flowers are placed toward the tops of the branches; they are divided into five parts, of a most beautiful blue, and have a black eye as it were in the middle.

Borage has the credit of being a great cordial; but if it possess any such virtues, they are to be obtained only by a light cold infusion; so that the way of throwing it into cold wine is better than all the medicinal preparations, for in them it is nauseous.


The Family Herbal, 1812, was written by John Hill.