2. Anchusa L. (bugloss)

Plants perennial herbs (annual or biennial elsewhere), with sometimes somewhat woody, stout taproots. Stems erect or ascending, unbranched or branched, pubescent with sparse to moderate, spreading to loosely ascending, bristly, pustular-based hairs. Leaves alternate and basal, the basal and lower stem leaves with a winged petiole, the median and upper leaves sessile. Leaf blades linear to narrowly oblong, narrowly lanceolate, or narrowly oblanceolate, those of the basal and lower stem leaves long-tapered at the base, those of the median and upper leaves usually angled or rounded at the base, sometimes clasping the stem, angled or short-tapered to a bluntly or more commonly sharply pointed tip, the surfaces and margins moderately to densely pubescent with more or less spreading, bristly, pustular-based hairs. Inflorescences panicles with ascending to spreading or arched branches, these scorpioid, spikelike racemes, the flowers short-stalked, each subtended by a bract. Calyces actinomorphic, 5-lobed, the lobes linear to narrowly triangular, with bristly, pustular-based hairs, persistent and ascending at fruiting. Corollas funnelform to trumpet-shaped, actinomorphic (zygomorphic elsewhere), blue, purple, or purplish red, the throat with small, scalelike appendages, the lobes loosely ascending or spreading, rounded. Stamens attached above the midpoint of the corolla tube, the filaments very short, the anthers oblong, positioned at about the level of the scales, not exserted from the corolla. Ovary deeply 4-lobed, the style slender, not exserted from the corolla, often more or less persistent at fruiting, the stigma capitate, somewhat 2-lobed. Fruits dividing into 2–4 nutlets, these erect or angled obliquely, ovoid or oblong-obovoid, attached to the relatively flat gynobase at the base, the attachment scar with a short, stalklike projection and surrounded by a collarlike ring, the surface appearing variously wrinkled, ridged, and/or tuberculate, white to grayish white. Thirty-five to 40 species, Europe, Asia, Africa.

Steyermark (1963) overlooked the presence of both Anchusa species as rare escapes from cultivation in Missouri.