Larkspur

Forking larkspur, also called field or rocket larkspur, is an annual herb of the buttercup family that grows thirty to eighty centimetres tall on an upright, hairy stem branching freely near the top. Its leaves are deeply lobed and feathery, and from May to August it bears small clusters of dark blue or purple flowers, each with a backward-pointing spur. It is native from Spain and France across Europe to Turkey, Georgia and western Siberia, favouring sandy or chalky soil, dry weedy ground, roadside ditches and cereal fields, and it has grown scarce in central and southern Europe as herbicides and intensive tillage have spread. It is also grown as an ornamental. A medieval Italian legend held that larkspur sprang up where knights wiped a slain dragon's blood from their swords, and in Germany it was thrown with vervain through a wreath of mugwort into the Midsummer bonfire for protection. Magical tradition says that it keeps ghosts away, that looking through a bunch of it at a Midsummer fire preserves the eyes for a year, and that its flowers drive off scorpions and other venomous creatures.