4/2/2011 Email from Jim E.: “What a memorable high-country hike early afternoon, on this balmy but windy day on the US Forest Service’s Elkhorn Creek Trail at ~8,000 ft. Its trailhead was renovated last year (I’d not even known it was there down the Log Cabin Road, which I’ve been on so many times). To my amazement I spotted the first flowers of the season! I could not believe it; had to go back to the truck for my digital camera.
Jim E sent two photos he took of this plant to Jennifer Ackerfield of the CSU Herbarium.
6/24/2010 Jennifer emailed: “Ah, you have Asperugo procumbens. I had it in my yard too this year. Weird little Boraginaceae with downward pointing bristles/hairs on the stem.”
6/24/2010 Jim’s response: “I thought it had to be a borage, what with the coarse ‘hairs’ —Weber & Wittmann say ‘The name borage comes from a Middle Latin source, burra, meaning rough hair or short wool, just as the modern work, bur.’ Somehow, I got trapped in the doublet that led to Symphytum and Anchusa. I should have looked a bit further to Asperugo. The description fits perfectly: ‘Flowers in the axils of the stem leaves; fruiting calyx much larger than the flowers; weakly-stemmed annual with retrorsely prickly hispid leaves. Asperugo Madwort.'”
Glacier View Meadows Ecology 