Borage, Borago officinalis, is a bristly annual with brilliant blue star-shaped flowers and a cool cucumber-like scent, long grown in kitchen and cottage gardens. Its oldest and most consistent reputation is as a plant of gladness and courage: Pliny records that steeped in wine it drove away sorrow and gave cheer, and an old couplet, ego borago gaudia semper ago, I, borage, always bring joy, fixes the theme. Its flowers were floated in the stirrup-cup given to departing crusaders and jousters to hearten them, and it still garnishes summer drinks.
Modern herbal medicine has focused less on borage's old cheering reputation than on borage seed oil, marketed as starflower oil, which is rich in gamma-linolenic acid and sold for skin conditions and premenstrual symptoms; clinical trial results have been mixed and inconclusive rather than clearly supportive. A caution belongs alongside this modern use: like its relative comfrey, borage contains small amounts of pyrrolizidine alkaloids capable of harming the liver, so that regulators in several countries restrict borage leaf and flower preparations, a genuine safety concern that sits oddly beside the plant's long reputation as nothing but a bringer of cheer.