Plant Story--Puccoon, Lithospermum

In ecology classes, some student always complained about the difficulty of learning the scientific names of plants, and I long ago came up with examples where the common name is no easier. One of those is puccoon.

fringed puccoon, Lithospermum incisum

The plants called puccoon are in the genus Lithospermum (borage family, Boraginaceae). Neither puccoon, which means "dye-plant" in Virginia Algonquian, nor Lithospermum. which means "stone seed" in Latin, is a familiar word to Americans. Stone seed and gromwell (what is a gromwell?) are other common names for Lithospermum species, but I learned it as puccoon.