Description

More popular than the use of borage foliage as a pot-herb and a salad is the employment of borage blossoms and the tender upper leaves, in company or not with those of nasturtium, as a garnish or an ornament to salads, and still more as an addition to various cooling drinks. The best known of these beverages is cool tankard, composed of wine, water, lemon juice, sugar and borage flowers. To this “they seem to give additional coolness.” They are often used similarly in lemonade, negus, claret-cup and fruit juice drinks.

The plant has possibly a still more important though undeveloped use as a bee forage. It is so easily grown and flowers so freely that it should be popular with apiarists, especially those who own or live near waste land, dry and stony tracts which they could sow to it. For such places it has an advantage over the many weeds which generally dispute possession in that it may be readily controlled by simple cultivation. It generally can hold its own against the plant populace of such places.