My Garden Has the Blues Trivia Quiz

Answer: bluebonnet

Bluebonnets are also called lupines as they belong to the genus Lupinus. The bluebonnet may have been named after the broad, flat, brimless cap of dark blue wool with a feather on the side, of the sort that Scottish soldiers used to wear (and the soldiers themselves were called Bluebonnets, too). Or it may have been named for the sort of bonnet that pioneer women wore to protect their faces from sunlight. Either way, the silky blue flowers of bluebonnet are lovely and bright, but unfortunately some species, like L. subcarnosus, or buffalo clover, have been a major cause of livestock poisoning in the southwestern USA! Nonetheless, Texas adopted all the bluebonnet species as its state flower, including the favored L. texensis (Texas bluebonnet).

In the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson (First Lady of the United States) embarked on a beautification program that led to widespread planting of bluebonnets along the roads of Texas. The blue blooms in spring are now a common site and popular for photographing.

Answer: blue violet

Viola sororia (literally "sisterly violet") is not only called "common blue violet" but also the "common purple violet"! Frankly they do look more purple than blue to me; but culture and other factors have a lot do with an individual's color perception.

Other names for this widespread flower of America are the meadow violet, woolly blue violet, wood violet, and the hooded violet. It's often considered a weed in the USA, yet several states have made it their official flower: Rhode Island, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Illinois. The Cherokee people once used it as a remedy for colds and headaches.

Don't confuse the common blue violet with the European sweet violet (V. odorata), also called the garden violet or the English violet, which can grow up to eight inches tall, vs. three inches for the common blue violet (20cm vs. 7½cm)

Answer: dolphin

The hollow little projection at the end of the flower is what has captured the imagination of horticulturalists and botanists. Delphinium, which names the plant or the genus, comes from the Latin for "dolphin" (the porpoise, not the dolphin-fish otherwise known as mahi-mahi), if you see the spur as a tail. Another common name for the Delphinium genus that you may have heard of is 'larkspur' (that is, a lark's spur). There are many species of delphinium or larkspur; pictured here is a common Iberian species, Delphinium gracile -- and how gracile indeed this blossom is! (To me, however, it looks more like an elephant trumpeting than a dolphin!). In Spanish, D. gracile is called 'espuela de caballero', meaning "horseman's (or knight's) spur".

The distinctive blue color of most delphinium/larkspur species comes from the pigment delphindin. Like many other blue flowers, however, it can grow in a variety of colors.

Answer: bachelor's button

The blue cornflower or bachelor's button has had a history as colorful as its blossoms. As the plant grows wild in the cornfields of Europe, a bachelor courting a fair maiden might easily wear a Centaurea cyanus in his lapel button. Somehow, it is supposed to tell him whether his girlfriend loves him.

A member of the aster family, this European wildflower with delicate blossoms has made the U.S. Department of Agriculture's List of Introduced, Invasive, and Noxious Plants. In Germany, the blue cornflower was Kaiser Wilhelm's favorite flower, and when Germany was still a collection of principalities, 19th-century pan-Germanists adopted it to represent their cause.

But in the 1930s, while the National Socialist Party was banned in Austria, Nazis used the cornflower to identify each other.

Then in the 21st century, the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party adopted it as their symbol. The bachelor's button is also the floral emblem of Estonia, and in France it may be worn as "le bleuet", a symbol of war remembrance, rather like the red poppy in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.

Answer: borage

Pliny the Elder believed that borage (Borago oficinalis) uplifted one's mood, and in folk medicine it was believed that slipping a few drops of borage seed oil in a man's drink will give him the courage to propose to his sweetheart! In modern times, the seed oil is extracted from the borage plant and marketed as a dietary supplement because it has the highest concentration of desirable gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), even more so than evening primrose oil or blackcurrant seed oil, other popular sources for GLA, which has anti-inflammatory properties.

Borage is native to the Mediterranean but is found everywhere in modern times. Some horticulturists and farmers use borage a companion plant to help protect spinach, legumes, strawberries, and even tomatoes. In your garden, you will probably find clusters of bees around it, and it was once used by beekeepers to help boost honey production.

Answer: hyacinth

Originating in the Mediterranean region, the modern center of cultivation is the Netherlands. A vast number of cultivars of hyacinth exist, with blue ones ranging from Royal Navy to Aida (a deep blue) to Chicago (a violet blue). There are pink cultivars like the Gipsy Queen (salmon-colored) and Jan Bos (a deep pink). The hyacinth is named for the handsome Spartan prince Hyakinthos (sometimes spelled 'Hyacinth' in English), who in Greek mythology was a war hero and a favorite of Apollo, and he was the subject of various local cults in ancient times. The flower was believed to have arisen from his blood when he died of a blow to the head.

Hyacinth are beautiful to look at, but please don't eat them or let your pets eat them, as they are extremely toxic, especially the bulbs.

Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "bouquet") is a character in the beloved British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearance". The hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) is the largest flying parrot species and comes from South America.

Answer: hydrangea

The more acidic the soil (ph 5.5 or less), the more azure (light blue) the flowers; the more alkaline the soil (ph 6.5 or greater), the pinker the flowers. If in-between (ph 5.5-6.5), the flowers are purplish. So the bush in the picture has slightly acidic soil as most of the flowers are blue but some are a light purple color (and I think I spy some pink ones). If you want to have your own litmus-paper plant, however, do not buy white hydrangea species, like climbing hydrangea (H. anamola), for the flowers do not change with the acidity of the soil as they lack the necessary pigment.

Hydrangea flowers last long, from early spring to early fall, and species of the genus Hydrangea grow in clusters called corymbs (sort of an arch or semicircular shape) or panicles (multi-branched flowers). The blue Hydrangea macrophylla pictured has grown so common on the island of Faial in the Azores that it is nicknamed "Blue Island". 'Hydrangea' derives from the Greek for "water vessel".

Linguistic note:
English uses the scientific name for the genus, Hydrangea, to name this beautiful plant, though formerly used "hortensia", an earlier name for the genus, after the wife a French botanist. Common names for the the very popular Hydrangea macrophylla bush pictured include bigleaf hydrangea, lacecap hydrangea, and French hydrangea -- which is ironic since the French call it 'hortensia'. Similarly, it's 'Gartenhortensie' in German, 'ortensia' in Italian, and 'hortenzie velkolistá' ("bigleaf hortensia") in Czech.

Answer: pansy

Pansies come in a variety of colors, with blue as well as purple, white, and yellow naturally appearing even among wild pansies. The wild pansy (Viola tricolor) originated in Europe and is also known as heartsease, Johnny-jump-up, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, three faces in a hood, and a host of other quaint names, including come-and-cuddle-me. The garden pansy (such as the one pictured) is a hybrid plant, is usually referred to as 'V. tricolor var. hortensis' and boasts much larger flowers than its wild cousin.

The word 'pansy' comes from the French word 'pensée', meaning "thought". For this reason, it has long been a symbol for freethinkers and freethought. The flower got its name because, at least to some, it resembles the face of a person deep in thought.

Pansies are in the same genus as violets, Viola. It is very easy to tell the large garden pansies from violets, especially when the pansies have a "beard" (patch of darkness emanating from the center) or are multi-colored, but small wild pansies look a lot like violets. If you aren't sure, look at the petals. If four point upward (or outward as in the photo) and one downward, it's a pansy; if two point up and three point down, it's a violet.

Answer: bluebell

Bluebells are of the genus Hyacinthoides, meaning "hyancith-like", but it's not a hyacinth (genus Hyacinthus), although some folks call the common bluebell (H. non-scripta) a wood hyacinth or wild hyacinth. In early springtime in the British Isles, especially in England, the common bluebell will blanket forests in a violet-blue carpet called "bluebell woods" before the new canopy of leaves darkens the floor.

The common bluebell is wild, but the Victorians introduced the Spanish bluebell (H. hispanica), which sports a much paler blue, for their gardens. A hybrid of the two species has also become a popular garden flower. Bluebells are native to western Europe and northwestern Africa. Because of this intermingling, however, the common bluebell has become a protected species in the UK.

There is another blue flower, (genus Muscari) that is sometimes called 'bluebell' in the UK but 'grape hyacinth' in the USA, for its blossoms look rather like bunches of small grapes. And another genus (Mertensia) with trumpet-shaped flowers and native to Asia, North America, and Europe is also sometimes called bluebell. Lastly, the common harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) is sometimes called bluebell in Scotland.

Answer: rose

A rose is a rose is a rose, except when it is blue! A blue rose does not exist in nature; the rose lacks the necessary pigment. There are "blue" cultivars of the ever-popular rose, such as Blue Moon, but though called "blue", they are really lilac or red-violet in color. To get a bright, true blue like the rose pictured, horticulturalists and florists have long resorted to the ancient practice of dyeing white roses by hand. Persians were frequent practitioners of this art.

In the twenty-first century, however, scientists have used gene-splicing to create roses that contain delphindin, a blue pigment from the bright blue delphinium, also known as larkspur, but even then the rose created, called Suntory, is really the color of lilac or lavender. No wonder blue roses in literature and art have long symbolized the mysterious and unobtainable!