grassroots Horticulture : Blue for a Cottage Garden

_________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________

Gardening | Plant ID

nigella

Nigella is a genus of attractive hardy annual herbs of the Buttercup Family, with blue, yellow, or white flowers, and very finely cut foliage, which probably suggests the common name, Fennel-flower. It is also called Love-in-the-mist and will be forever linked to Gertrude Jekyll.

Alice Morse Earle wrote of this mysterious plant in Old Time Gardens:

"I join with Dr. Forbes Watson in finding the Nigella uncanny. It has a half-spidery look, that seems ungracious in a flower. Its names are curious: Love-in-a-mist, Love-in-a-puzzle, Love-in-a-tangle, Puzzle-love, Devil-in-a-bush, Katherine-flowers—another of the many allusions to St. Katherine and her wheel; and the persistent styles do resemble the spokes of a wheel. A name given it in a cottage garden in Wayland was Blue Spider-flower, which seems more suited than that of Spiderwort for the Tradescantia. Spiderwort, like all "three-cornered" flowers, is a flower of mystery; and so little cared for to-day that it is almost extinct in our gardens, save where it persists in out-of-the-way spots. A splendid clump of it is here shown, which grows still in the Worcester garden I so loved in my childhood. In this plant the old imagined tracings of spider's legs in the leaves can scarce be seen. With the fanciful notion of "like curing like" ever found in old medical recipes, Gerarde says, vaguely, the leaves are good for "the Bite of that Great Spider," a creature also of mystery."

Below are views of the fine leaves and unusual seed pods.