I found this growing in a flower bed last year and left it because the first flush of leaves is attractive and to see what it turned out to be. It survived the winter so is obviously perennial. I finally hit the books and figured it is a Lithospermum. I'm leaning towards L. officinale but not sure if it could be L. latifolium (any other suggestions welcome). Here are some pics, unfortunately I don't have any of the flowers (which are not, from memory, yellow, which eliminates several others), it is at the "nutlet" stage now:
It does not match Buglossoides arvensis, which is what comes up in the ATP database for L. officinale, nor does the Catalogue of Life consider them synonyms (and the nutlets are supposedly different) so I have started a separate thread asking about that on the Plant Database forum. Thanks for any help.
If you can trust your memory that flowers were not yellow, and yet, apparently, don't know what color they are - you can look here if it is a lithospermum: http://michiganflora.net/genus...
At the bottom it differentiates your two suspect species. I can't see the underside of the leaves in your pics, but the pubescence on the up sides would be "mostly somewhat ascending".
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers. - Socrates
Leftwood said:If you can trust your memory that flowers were not yellow, and yet, apparently, don't know what color they are .
The flowers are nearer to white/greenish. One other reference I saw said all the other Lithosopermum that may be encountered would be obviously bright yellow which is why I made that comment because they were definitely not bright yellow. Sorry, I wasn't very clear. Thanks for the link, I found a similar key also but I can't check out the pubescence until tomorrow because it's in a different garden. Thanks again.
