Blue-eyed-Mary, 24th of April, 2015

Blue-eyed-Mary, navelwort, watercolor

Blue-eyed-Mary (above) is also called navelwort or Venus' navelwort, or forget-me-not, although all these names often include other plants and not only the one with a Latin name >> Omphalodes verna. Omphalodes comes from Greek word omphalòs which mean navel, and it regards the shape of the fruit of the plant.

Blue-eyed-Mary's flowers are tiny, perhaps 3-4 millimeters in diameter, and the plant blooms from March to May. With regard to colors, one immediately notices fragile blue, but also subtle purple for which I used liqueur made of Aronia fruit.

The image below shows botanical illustration of Blue-eyed-Mary from the book "Favorite Flowers of Garden and Greenhouse" from year 1896 which contains 316 illustrations. In the foreword, Edward Step said:

Without exception the whole of the three hundred and sixteen plates illustrating this work have been drawn and coloured direct from Nature; and we think we may justly claim for the artists engaged that they have succeeded admirably in giving not merely shape and colour, but expression also - the characteristic pose of each plant.

The artists were so important to them that their names cannot be found anywhere in the book. The image below suffers from the loss of blue color in the reproduction process, or it may faded away with time.

Blue-eyed-Mary, navelwort, botanical illustration
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Last updated on 24th of April 2015.