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Anchusa strigosa, known as strigose bugloss or prickly alkanet, is a perennial herb of the borage family from the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. It forms a basal leaf rosette and sends up blue-flowered stems to about a metre, grown mainly as a wildflower or in dry, sunny, well-drained gardens.
Anchusa strigosa is a non-succulent species of herbaceous plants in the Boraginaceae family endemic to the Eastern Mediterranean regions, particularly Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Iran. It is known widely by its common names of strigose bugloss and prickly alkanet.
The plant is native to the Old World, namely, the Eastern Mediterranean basin and adjacent Western Asia, growing in heavy soils in semi-steppe shrub lands, shrub-steppes, and in Mediterranean woodlands. In Israel its principal habitat is the transition belt between the Mediterranean coastal region and the arid desert regions, growing along waysides in sandy and chalkstone habitats.
The roots of Anchusa (like those of Alkanna and Lithospermum) contain anchusin (or alkanet-red), a red-brown resinoid colouring matter. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol, chloroform and ether. The red-tinge was used in women's cosmetics as rouge to redden the cheeks.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Anchusa strigosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
