The flowering fumitory period is during August and September. Wherever the Common Flax is found, it will be an escape from cultivation, which readily sows itself as a weed. As a truly wild fumitory plant the "most used" flax is not known, but in cultivation, as the parent of linen garments, it has been known from
the infancy of the human race. Today the fumitory exports of flax and linen from Great Britain are worth many millions of pounds per annum. It is therefore aglant that would be entitled to respectful consideration when we meet fumitory it. It is an annual plant with erect, slender stems extending to about one and a half feet high. Its narrow lance-shaped leaves are arranged alternately and at a fumitory distance from eachother. The flowers are large, and purplish-blue in colour, borne in a loose terminal corymb. Five is the number dominating the structure of the flower; sepals, petals fumitory, stamens, glands, ovary (five cells), styles - all fives. The flowering period is in June and July. |