Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Alpine Forget-me-not
Myosotis alpestris
Also known as Mountain Forget-me-not, Rocky Mountain Forget-me-not, Alaska Forget-me-not
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Long before it was a garden favorite, the Alpine Forget-me-not grew wild across the high meadows of Europe's mountains, its small five-petaled blooms turning entire slopes a soft, misty blue each summer. European folklore ties the flower's name to a well-loved legend of a knight who was swept away by a river while gathering the blossoms for his beloved, calling out to be remembered as he was carried off. That story helped carry the forget-me-not into the language of flowers as a lasting symbol of true love, fidelity, and remembrance, a meaning it still holds at weddings, on memorial ribbons, and in keepsake gardens today. Unlike some of its Boraginaceae cousins, it was never widely adopted as a medicinal herb, and its true legacy has always been sentimental rather than curative.
How to grow & use it
✦The full apothecary for Alpine Forget-me-not
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- ✦Remedies & preparations
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- ✦Primrose
- ✦Columbine
- ✦Violets
- ✦Brunnera, sometimes called false forget-me-not
- ✦Virginia bluebells
“For the small blue blossom that has always meant, simply, remember me.”
The Alpine Forget-me-not was chosen by a vote of Alaska's pioneer schoolchildren in 1917 and later adopted as the territory's official flower, prized for the way its small blue blooms kept appearing through short, hard mountain summers.
Alpine forget-me-not is in the borage family, some members of which contain liver-affecting pyrrolizidine alkaloids, and it has no established safe dose for eating or brewing. It's best treated as a garden and identification plant rather than something to ingest, especially for children or anyone pregnant or nursing.