Flax (*Linum usitatissimum*)
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###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Linum_usitatissimum%2C_Findlay_Township%2C_2024-10-22.jpg) Photographed October 22.
The species name _usitatissimum_ literally means that this is the most commonly used species of flax, and so it is—the source of real linen and flaxseed oil, as well as the source of the purest blue in the cottage garden. It has established itself as an occasional volunteer, especially in areas where it might have been grown commercially at one time: these plants were growing at the edge of a cornfield in Findlay Township.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Linum_usitatissimum%2C_Findlay_Township%2C_2024-10-22-1.jpg)
Gray describes the genus and the species:
LÌNUM [Tourn.] L. FLAX. Sepals (persistent), petals, stamens, and styles 5, regularly alternate with each other. Pod of 5 united carpels (into which it splits in dehiscence), 5-celled, with 2 seeds hanging from the summit of each cell, which is partly or completely divided into two by a false partition projecting from the back of the carpel, the pod thus becoming 10-celled. Seeds anatropous, mucilaginous, flattened, containing a large embryo with plano-convex cotyledons. Herbs, with tough fibrous cortex, simple and sessile entire leaves, without stipules, but often with glands in their place, and with corymbose or panicled flowers. Corolla usually ephemeral. (The classical name of the Flax.)
*Petals blue, large (1 cm. or more in length; capsule 10–12 mm. in diameter.*
*Annuals; stigmas elognated.*
*False septa of the capsule not ciliate.*
*L. usitatíssimum* L. (COMMON F.) Erect annual; stem 3-5 dm. high, corymbosely branched at top; *sepals acute, ciliate;* fruit nearly indehiscent, its *septa not ciliate.* Occasionally spontaneous in fields and on roadsides. (Introd. from Eu.)