Borage

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Worked constantly by honey bees, bumblebees and solitary bees from morning to evening. The nodding flower shape suits a bee that can hang and buzz, and bumblebees in particular work borage with obvious efficiency.

The nectar sits at the base of a short cone and is reachable by short-tongued bees, so borage is genuinely available to the full range rather than only to long-tongued species.

Worth knowing

One of the few plants that genuinely deserves the top rating for nectar, and it earns it through replenishment rate rather than through abundance of flowers.

Flowering

In flower

June to September (northern hemisphere)

A very long season for an annual, and extendable further by sowing in succession from April to July. Frost ends it.

When nectar flows

Exceptional nectar replenishment rate — refilling within roughly two to four minutes of being emptied — which is what separates it from plants that merely have many flowers. It also secretes in dull and cool weather when many Mediterranean plants shut down.

Year-to-year variation

Unusually dependable at garden scale. A honey crop only where borage is grown as a field crop for seed oil.

What it does to the honey

Borage nectar produces a very pale, very mild honey with a faint cool cucumber note — the same freshness the leaves have. It is a case where the plant's own character survives into the honey only faintly, which is the ordinary outcome rather than the exception.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, any reasonably drained soil, no feeding required. It performs better on poor soil than on rich, where it grows leggy and flops.

Size

45-90 cm, sprawling to a similar width.

Native range

The Mediterranean, and naturalised across most of Europe, North America and elsewhere.

Suits

Containers and window boxes, Small gardens, Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area, Farm scale

• Sow direct where it is to grow; it resents transplanting because of a long taproot.
• Self-seeds enthusiastically and will return every year without effort. Some gardeners find this generous and some find it a nuisance — pulling the surplus seedlings takes a minute.
• Sow in succession from April to July for continuous flowering into autumn. This is the single cheapest way to extend garden forage.
• The flowers are edible and traditionally floated in drinks; the leaves are edible in small quantities.

What it looks like

A sprawling bristly annual with grey-green hairy leaves and nodding five-pointed star-shaped flowers of an intense sky blue, with a black cone of anthers at the centre. Pink and white forms occur.