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.

Visiting Northern Colorado--June Flowers at Carter Lake

fringed puccoon, Lithospermum incisum

Check out the flowers at Carter Lake this spring!

This blog post shows flowers from early June 2014--soon to be visible again!

 We drove to the south end of Carter Lake, southern Larimer County, Colorado, and took a casual walk in the campground. It was very quiet on a weekday morning.