Forget Me Nots come from the borage family (Boraginaceae).   They have a beautiful rare blue, pinkish or white flower with yellow eye.  Very abundant here in the U.S. now, they originally came from Europe and Asia.

There are many legends about the forget-me-not.  One is a popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather some of these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool, and threw a bunch on the bank calling out, as he sank forever from her sigh, “Forget Me Not”.

There is a German legend telling the story of when God named all the plants, when a tiny unnamed one cried out, “Forget-me-not, O Lord!”, and God replied “That shall be your name”.

Another dismal myth sends its hero forth seeking hidden treasure caves in a mountain under the guidance of a fairy.  He fills his pockets with gold, but not heeding the fairy’s warning to “forget not the best” (he is crushed by the closing together of the mountain).

There is also a folk-tale from the Persians, as told by their poet Shiraz, “It was in the golden morning of the early world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Paradise.  He had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the lowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world.  He returned to earth and assisted her, and together they went hand in hand.  When their task was ended, they entered Paradise together, for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel whose love her beauty had won when she sat by the river twining forget-me-nots in her hair”.

It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not’s center that first led to the belief of the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers serving as pathfinders to insects.  This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between the stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue.  Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited and then cross-fertilize it.

But forget-me-nots are not wholly dependent on insects.  When these fail, a fully mature flower is still able to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on the stigma.