Friend reacted badly

[LittleMissnotLittleMrs]

Help - what plant is this please?

~20cm tall she reckons

It looks like patersons curse it has little bristles which can irritate skin

Some sort of hardy geranium?

@Scottishskifun

It looks like patersons curse it has little bristles which can irritate skin

Thank you x 🏆

That's an interesting name I'd not come across - aka purple vipers bugloss, wiki tells me.

Yes, the shape of the flower spikes along with the colour and shape of the flowers suggest it's in the forget-me-not/borage/comfrey family, and I would say it was an Echium and purple vipers bugloss is a good shout. But a lot of the larger members of the family have hairs which can be irritant.

Echium vulgate

vulgare

E vulgare is vipers bugloss, purple vipers bugloss is E plantagineum. Could be either, but if the colours in the picture are right, E. plantagineum. Not blue enough for E. vulgare

dint You may be right. However this blue/mauve colour is difficult to photograph, and many plants are showing altered colours in this heat. E plantagenium is quite unusual in this country whereas E vulgare is in most of the wildflower and pollinator mixes

@Trethew Very valid points. I was going from the faint lines in the flower, which I'm not sure that VB has, though I didn't go outside to look.

You get a better quality of "wildflower seed" where you are - round here they seem to add Phacelia instead. I hate the use of "wildflower mix" when most of them are merely mixes of annuals from around the world, with a few garden varieties thrown in for good measure.