Cornflower

Where it grows

The cornflower was once a near-universal weed of European cereal fields — “corn” meaning grain — but herbicides and seed-cleaning machinery have driven it close to local extinction in the wild across much of its range. It survives in seed mixes for sown wildflower strips and as a garden cottage-garden annual.

How to recognise it

A slender grey-stemmed annual thirty to ninety centimetres tall with narrow grey-green leaves. Each composite flower head is two to four centimetres across, with a frill of deeply notched, intense violet-blue outer florets surrounding a tighter cluster of darker disc florets. A papery, scaly involucre subtends each head.

Garden & cultural uses

The pure colour of cornflower blue gave its name to a recognised colour standard, and Crayola crayon. The dried petals are scattered on Earl Grey tea blends and used as a natural food colouring. In France the bleuet de France is the equivalent of the British remembrance poppy.

In symbolism

The bleuet de France commemorates fallen French soldiers and is worn on Armistice Day, while in Germany the cornflower symbolised Prussian royal devotion.