Abraham-Isaac-Jacob or Oriental Borage, Trachystemon orientalis.

Last Sunday we took the train to Brundall and walked to Strumpshaw Fen RSPB Reserve. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we saw our first Brimstone butterfly of the year, heard a Bittern booming and saw two new species of solitary bees: Andrena clarkella (Clarke’s Mining Bee) and Andrena praecox (Small Sallow Mining Bee).

On our way to Strumpshaw we passed under the railway bridge on the eastern outskirts of Brundall. It’s quite a shady spot, with some dappled sunlight. It is also home to an interesting plant: Abraham-Isaac-Jacob or Oriental Borage, Trachystemon orientalis.

Trachystemon orientalis is a member of the Boraginaceae, the Borage family, and its flowers look very like those of Borage, Borago officinalis. Borage is an upright annual that thrives in on my sunny, sandy-soiled allotment. Trachystemon orientalis is a spreading perennial that prefers shade. Neither plant is a British native: Borage comes from the Mediterranean region and Trachystemon orientalis comes from Bulgaria, Georgia and Turkey. It grows from 20 – 60 cm (8 – 24 inches) tall and is hardy in British growing conditions.

The plant was introduced into Britain in 1868. There are 170 records in the NBN Atlas, and interestingly, this does not include the plants at Brundall, although plants were recorded in 1990 at Strumpshaw in ‘A Flora of Norfolk’ [1]. There are garden varieties of Lungwort (Pulmonaria) [2] on the bank next to the Trachystemon orientalis, so it can’t really be described as a wild habitat.

If your garden has a large patch of dense shade, Trachystemon orientalis will make good ground cover, as long as the ground isn’t waterlogged, but it can be very vigorous. The plant spreads by underground rhizomes and will even do well in dry shade, although the leaves may wilt during a drought.

The plant’s coarse green leaves (which look a bit like those of Comfrey [2]) will suppress less robust plants and bulbs as well as weeds. The RHS ‘Encyclopedia of Perennials’ [3] describes the plant as “coarse but effective” but warns that it “needs space and can be invasive”. The Wildflower Finder website warns that it “spreads vigorously in damp woodland and shady banks to cover the ground at the exclusion of most other plants”.

The Ben’s Botanics website describes how Trachystemon orientalis grew “for years under a Beech tree [where] it emerged each spring but went into dormancy during the summer when the tree took most of the water in the soil”.

Louis the Plant Geek (from Rhode Island in the United States) has a wealth of information on growing Trachystemon orientalis, including suitable planting companions.

Several nurseries stock Trachystemon orientalis, including The Beth Chatto Gardens (the RHS Plant Finder lists 31 suppliers at the time of writing). If you want to increase your stock, you can divide existing clumps or take root cuttings. It will often “gently self-seed” too.

Although The Beth Chatto Gardens website gives its flowering time as May to June, the plants at Brundall are normally in flower from as early as February or March. The Wildflower Finder website has some lovely photographs of the plant (as usual, far better than mine), flowering in West Sussex in late March.

One of the plant’s English names, Early-flowering Borage, is a reference to its flowering time.

Trachystemon is derived from the Greek trachys, meaning ‘rough’, and stemon, ‘a stamen’. Orientalis means ‘eastern’ and this gives rise to the English names of Oriental Borage and Eastern Borage.

Abraham-Isaac-Jacob is a more interesting English name, even if it is botanically less descriptive. The name is clearly a reference to characters in The Bible (and the Quran): Abraham was the father of Isaac and grandfather of Jacob. The UK Wildflowers website says that the name has sometimes been given to Lungwort and Comfrey and refers to the way that the flowers change colour as they age [4].

In a reply to The Transatlanic Gardener’s question, Mark from Cool Plants says “I believe the connection is simply that by being able to see a cluster with three differently coloured flowers, side by side, one might have said, “Look, there’s Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, or in other words, three generations side by side, the older flower possibly looking a little less fresh than the younger.” Please let me know if you find a better explanation.

The Plants For A Future website lists no known edible uses but the Wildflower Finder website tells us that in Bulgaria, Georgia and Turkey it is “eaten as a vegetable after cooking in boiling water, both rhizome, stems, leaves and flowers”. Stephen Barstow gives more details on his Edimentals website [5] and describes how, in Bulgaria, flowers and shoots are used in salads or eaten with fish or eggs. In Germany, Turkish immigrants grow the plant as a crop, while in Turkey itself the plant is one of 73 different plants that are sometimes used in the traditional dish sarma.

However, it is probably wise to exercise moderation when eating Trachystemon orientalis, as many members of the Boraginaceae contain toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids which are carcinogenic and can cause liver damage [6].

Notes:

1. Gillian Beckett, Alec Bull and Robin Stevenson, ‘A Flora of Norfolk’. Privately published. (1999). The railway bridge is in Brundall but Strumpshaw parish begins just yards to the east of the railway bridge. The BSBI distribution map does include Brundall.
   
2. Comfrey (Symphytum) and Lungwort (Pulmonaria) are also members of the Boraginaceae.
3. Graham Rice (Editor-in-Chief), ‘Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Perennials’. Dorling Kindersley. (2011).
4. This is very noticeable in some varieties of Lungwort, which have pink buds that open into blue flowers, but I couldn’t see any colour differences in the Trachystemon orientalis.
5. “Edimentals” is Stephen Barstow’s term for edible ornamental plants. The word deserves to be used more widely.
6. I have been unable to find any more information about the occurrence of these alkaloids in Trachystemon orientalis. The FDA Poisonous Plant Database includes the plant on a list of Plant species containing pyrrolizidine alkaloids, citing Bull LB et al. (eds.) (1968) “The pyrrolizidine alkaloids”. Elsevier. New York, (Appendix I), pp234-248. But the link to further information fails to open and although I found the book on Google Books, the relevant sections aren’t available online. If you have any more information on the subject, please let me know.