Creeping Comfrey - Symphytum grandiflorum
Crinkled, elliptic to ovate, medium to dark green leaves grow to 7 inches long on decumbent stems but to only 2 inches long on flowering stems. Tubular, bell-like, creamy yellow to white flowers appear in drooping clusters.
There are other comfreys with yellow or cream flowers, or with stolons
With stolons. The only other stoloniferous comfrey keyed out in Stace (4th edn.) is S x hidcotense, a hybrid with S grandiflorum with blue or pink flowers.
Photograph of whole plant, plus flowers; confirmation that plant is stoloniferous
Usually encountered as an escape from cultivation which establishes in waste places, verges etc. often close to habitation.
Flowering May and June.
Herbaceous perennial.
Occasional but widespread in England and Wales.
Uncommon in the wild in Leicestershire and Rutland. It was not recorded in the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire.
Graham Calow
Sapcote, B4114
21 March 2020
Graham Calow
Footpath off Park Road, Cosby
04 April 2016
Graham Calow
Footpath off Park Road, Cosby
04 April 2016
Craig Mabbett
Lutterworth Bitteswell Road
12 March 2020
Mike Higgott
Thurcaston
19 March 2017
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Species profile
- Common names
- Creeping Comfrey
- Species group:
- flowering plant
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Family:
- Boraginaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 14
- First record:
- 21/04/2012 (emsmith)
- Last record:
- 04/04/2025 (Hannah Keys)
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% of records within its species group
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Agromyza abiens/myosotidis/lithospermi agg.
The larvae of the Agromyzid flies Agromyza abiens, Agromyza myosotidis and Agromyza lithospermi produce identical mines on the leaves of several food plants in the Boraginaeceae family, such as Borage, Comfrey and Green Alkanet plus a number of other host plants. The initial narrow gallery contains frass in a double line, which it then expands to form a blotch mine. Several larvae may occupy a leaf to form a large blotch. Because the mines on these plants cannot be reliably separated to species level we treat them as an aggregate.