Anagallis arvensis, Fashion Show

Anagallis arvensis is an annual cycle herb of Primulaceae family relatively abundant in fields, roads, clearings of garrigue and pine forests, roadsides, edges of gardens and parks and coastal areas. Approximately 70% of plants produce flowers in dark blue and the remaining 30% red-orange flowers. However it is not difficult to find any hybrid or mutant copy with flowers of other colors: white, pink, blue, fuschia ....

Combined image with flowers of four colors. I recommend enlarge the photos with a double click.

The blue-flowered Anagallis arvensis is the most common.

The flowers of an intense dark blue stand out much on the light green of the leaves.

Each flower has five blue petals with striations like little fans. At the center acquired a nice color fuchsia. The five stamens protrude several millimeters above the flower and finish in a striking yellow anthers.

The variety of orange-red flowers are less abundant.

As in the blue flowers, in the red-orange variety the petals also become fuchsias in the center of the flower. We can see very well the five yellow anthers of the stamens.

 

.It is not difficult to find the two varieties growing together. Sometimes they are so intermingled that seem a single plant with flowers of two colors. However, if we follow each shoot to the roots, we see that they are different plants.

Find a copy of albino flowers is a surprise, a fluke.

The petals are white with a slight pink tinge and in the center of the flower show a deep blue ocean. The image clearly distinguishes the long-fuchsia red pistil protruding slightly above the five yellow anthers of the stamens.

 This Anagallis arvensis had flowers of different tonalities of sky blue color, some almost white. In the center had a striking fuchsia color.

In this picture we can see an albino flower with center of pink color much clearer than the previous flower. The blue flower belonged to another plant.

There is also a variety of flowers of an intense pink with red center.

Another pink flower in which we can see all the details. The flowers of Anagallis arvensis grown on a pedicel whose length ranges between 8 and 45 millimeters longer than the axilar leave of which they arise. In the picture, behind the petals, we can appreciate the five lanceolate-acuminate teeth of the calyx that is deeply divided.

And finally the variety of fuchsia flowers, most beautiful and strange. I would say that is a hybrid variety intermediate between the marine blue and the orange-red varieties.

The stems of this plant can grow to 70 centimeters. The leaves are opposite, sessile, ovate-oblong, sometimes lanceolate. On the underside often have blackish brown spots. The image shows fine details of the pedicels of flowers emerging from the armpit or junction of each leaf with the stem.

The fuchsia-colored flowers are for me the most beautiful. The petals have a tone somewhere between the two most abundant and the center of the flower becomes an intense blood-red.