Family Boraginaceae (Forget-Me-Not family).
The “true” Forget-Me-Not is a European import that makes itself at home along brooks and streams; these grew by a little tributary of the Pine Creek near Wexford. Though Forget-Me-Nots are famously blue, we often see pink ones as well. On some plants, the newer flowers are pink, fading to blue as they age.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
MYOSOTIS [Rupp.] L. SCORPION-GRASS. FORGET-ME-NOT.
Corolla-tube about the length of the 6-toothed or
5-cleft calyx, the throat with 5 small and blunt
arching appendages opposite the rounded lobes; the
latter convolute in the bud! Stamens included, on very
short filaments. Nutlets compressed. Low and mostly
soft-hairy herbs, with entire leaves, those of the
stem sessile, and with small flowers in naked racemes,
which are entirely bractless, or occasionally with
small leaves next the base, prolonged and straightened
in fruit. (Name composed of myos, mouse, and
os, ear, from the short and soft leaves in
some species.)
M. scorpiodes. (TRUE F.) Perennial; stems
ascending from an oblique creeping base, 3-7 dm. high,
loosely branched, smoothish; leaves
rough-pubescent, oblong-lanceolate or linear-oblong;
calyx-lobes much shorter than its tube; limb of
corolla 5-8 mm. broad, sky-blue, with a yellow eye. (M.
palustris Hill.) In wet ground, Nfd. to w. N.
Y., and southw. May-Sept. (Nat. from Eu.)
