Flowers - Soldiers and Sailors

Soldiers and Sailors is a perennial. These flowered in April.

I bought this in a pot from a stall, and was very pleased to do so. My mother grew them, and as a child I was fascinated that the same plant could produce both red and blue (or purple) flowers. Hence its name, of course. The formal name is Pulmonaria, or Lungwort. The name ending "wort" implies the plant was used for healing. The "doctrine of signatures" meant that people used to think that a plant looking like a part of the body, or the disease, could be used to heal that. All nonsense of course! The spotted leaves of Lungwort were supposed to look like a diseased lung.

Click on photos for large version.