The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Echium vulgare
Also called Blueweed, Viper's bugloss, Vipers bugloss, Blue Devil, Blue Echium, Blue Thistle, Common Echium
Common viper's bugloss is a biennial or short-lived perennial wildflower with bristly leaves and spikes of flowers that open pink and turn vivid blue. It is grown as an ornamental and does best in full sun and dry, well-drained soil.
Echium vulgare, known as viper's bugloss and blueweed, is a species of flowering plant in the borage family Boraginaceae. It is native to most of Europe and western and central Asia and it occurs as an introduced species in north-eastern North America, south-western South America and the South and North Island of New Zealand. If eaten, the plant is toxic to horses and cattle through the accumulation of pyrrolizidine alkaloids in the liver.
The plant root was used in ancient times as a treatment for snake or viper bites. According to the Doctrine of signatures, plants were thought to have traits (in this case a speckled stem reminiscent of snake skin, and flowers like an open viper's mouth) that mirror the ailment they treat.
E. vulgare is cultivated as an ornamental plant, and numerous cultivars have been developed. The cultivar 'Blue Bedder' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
It is native to Europe and temperate Asia. It has been introduced to Chile, New Zealand and North America, where it is naturalised in parts of the continent including Ontario and northern Michigan, being listed as an invasive species in Washington. It is found in dry, calcareous grassland and heaths, bare and waste places, along railways and roadsides and on coastal cliffs, sand dunes and shingle.
Echium aculeatum · Echium amoenum · Sand Bugloss · Echium brevirame · Pride of Madeira · Cretan viper's bugloss · Judean Viper's Bugloss · Pininana · Purple Viper's-bugloss · Red bugloss · Viper's bugloss
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Echium vulgare 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.
