Garden Cornflower - Centaurea cyanus
Other Names:
Bachelor's Button, Blue Bottle, Cornflower
Annual. Stems erect, branched, 20–60 cm. Herbage sparingly tomentose. Leaves petiolate below; blades linear-oblanceolate, 2–10 cm long, entire or with few linear lobes. Inflorescence corymbiform; heads solitary on branch tips. Involucres campanulate, 12–16 mm high; outer phyllaries ovate, green with a white to brown, scarious fringe at the tip; inner lanceolate with a blunt, white-fringed tip. Disk flowers 25 to 35, blue; the outer enlarged, resembling 5-lobed rays; inner corollas 11–15 mm long. Achenes 4–6 mm long; pappus bristles in 2 series (
Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).
POLLINATORS The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap:
Bombus vagans,
Bombus bifarius,
Bombus centralis,
Bombus fervidus,
Bombus rufocinctus,
Bombus ternarius,
Bombus terricola,
Bombus occidentalis,
Bombus griseocollis,
Bombus impatiens,
Bombus insularis, and
Bombus suckleyi (Thorp et al. 1983, Johnson 1986, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014, Tripoldi and Szalanski 2015).