Hidcote Comfrey
Hidcote Comfrey - Symphytum x hidcotense
This comfrey is stoloniferous, and has flowers with a hint of blue and has pink buds.
Many other species, hybrids and varieties of comfrey with blue, pink or pale flowers
Usually blue flowers, flushed red/pink; other varieties have pink or pale flowers. With stolons (the only other comfrey keyed in Stace (4th edn.) as stoloniferous is S x grandiflorum, with cream or pale yellow flowers). Leaves usually petiolate (with stalks), and not decurrent, or weakly so.
This can't be verified from the flowers alone; a photograph of the whole plant, including leaves and stems, and confirmation that the plant has stolons.
Waste places and verges, often close to habitation as a garden escape.
Flowering April and May.
Perennial.
Most frequent in southern and western England.
Status in Leicestershire and Rutland not known. It was not recorded in the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire.
Graham Calow
Footpath off Park Road, Cosby
04 April 2016
Ken Charity
Swithland Village
18 March 2017
Steve Mathers
River Soar - GUC (Bishop meadows Lock to Zouch)
03 May 2017
Graham Calow
Narborough Road, Cosby
14 April 2016
Ken Charity
Swithland Village
18 March 2017
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Agromyza abiens/myosotidis/lithospermi agg.
The larvae of the Agromyzid flies Agromyza abiens, Agromyza myosotidis and Agromyza lithospermi produce identical mines on the leaves of several food plants in the Boraginaeceae family, such as Borage, Comfrey and Green Alkanet plus a number of other host plants. The initial narrow gallery contains frass in a double line, which it then expands to form a blotch mine. Several larvae may occupy a leaf to form a large blotch. Because the mines on these plants cannot be reliably separated to species level we treat them as an aggregate.