Cornflower - Centaurea cyanus

Medium to tall plant with erect stems. Flowers violet blue or dark blue, occasionally white. 15 to 30 mm solitary the outer florets spreading and much longer than the inner.

Disturbed ground and other open habitats.

June to August.

Annual.

Uncommon now in Britain, and usually found as a casual. However it is sometimes seeded as part of meadow creation projects.

Increasingly recorded as an introduced species in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi & Evans, 1988) it was found in just 6 of the 617 tetrads.  It is commonly included in 'cornfield' wildflower seed-mixes.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but is not on the current RPR (Hall & Woodward, 2022); it is listed as 'data deficient' because it is not clear whether records are of introduced plants or natives.