A head of vivid blue florets, the outer ones large and ragged, over a hard silvery involucre with a dark fringe
Cornflower — Centaurea cyanus.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Cornflower
Annual · flowers June to August
Centaurea cyanus — Asteraceae
The cornflower is the intense blue annual of cornfields, once so abundant that its tough stems blunted the reapers' sickles and earned it the name hurtsickle. Herbicides and clean seed all but destroyed it in Britain, where it is now a priority species found chiefly on sown margins and verges. Abroad it fared better: it is the national flower of Estonia and, as the Bleuet de France, the French counterpart of the remembrance poppy.
How to spot them
- ▸A composite head of vivid blue florets — large, ragged, star-like outer ones round smaller purplish inner ones
- ▸Hard, egg-shaped, silvery-green involucre of bracts below the head, edged with a dark fringe
- ▸Wiry, grooved, grey-downy stems to about 80 cm, with narrow untoothed upper leaves
- ▸Arable field margins, sown wildflower strips, verges and waste ground, June to August
- ▸Blue is the giveaway: no other British knapweed has it
How to know it
It was called hurtsickle because its wiry stems blunted the blades of the reapers
Cornflower — also bluebottle and bachelor's button.
National flower of Estonia, and worn in France as the Bleuet, the counterpart of the British remembrance poppy
Cornflower.
A blue knapweed once abundant in cornfields, now a UK priority species surviving mainly on sown margins
Cornflower — Centaurea cyanus.
The genus is named for the centaur Chiron, said to have healed a wound with one of its species
Centaurea — the cornflower's genus.
Its petals are the blue flecks in Lady Grey tea, and its name is used for a grade of Kashmir sapphire
Cornflower — hence 'cornflower blue'.
Grows with corn chamomile and corncockle at College Lake in Buckinghamshire, one of the best arable-flower displays in Britain
Cornflower.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Asteraceae; also treated as Cyanus segetum in some floras
- •The Wildlife Trusts list it as a priority species under the UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework, and describe it as widespread but scarce
- •An archaeophyte: it arrived in Britain with arable farming, probably in the Iron Age
- •Country names include hurtsickle, bluebottle, bachelor's button and blue bonnets
- •Centaurea is named after the centaur Chiron, the mythical healer
- •National flower of Estonia; the Bleuet de France has been the French symbol of remembrance since the First World War
- •Only the outer ray-like florets are sterile; the smaller inner disc florets set the seed
- •'Cornflower blue' is a standard descriptor for the finest Kashmir sapphires, and the dried petals colour Lady Grey tea
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Cornflower