If all this seems more appropriate to November, it is in summer that you see this glorious flower. The bleuet grows, as its English name suggests, in cornfields. It is now uncommon in Britain, where use of selective weed-killers on cereal crops has eliminated it in most areas. In France, at least in my area in the Lot, the farmers have small fields of mixed cereals which are grown to provide winter food for the poultry and ducks. They do not use weed-killers and so the fields are bright with scarlet swathes of coquelicots – poppies – and the blue of bleuets. These beautiful flowers are all annuals which seed each year, taking advantage of the open soil between the young corn plants to grow, flower and seed again.
The flower is closely related to the wayside plant called knapweed or ‘hardhead’ (in French, considered as varieties of jacées). The true jacée has a similar appearance to the cornflower but is a deep red as are most knapweeds (occasional white ones, and some blue mountain species occur). The true jacée was never common in Britain and is now extinct there. The knapweeds are generally perennials or biennials so do not have the more precarious life of the cornflower. The commonest species do not have the spreading outer florets, seen spectacularly in the bleuet and in the purest form of the jacée. All have flower heads with a ball-shaped base which is very hard, even resisting the indentation of a fingernail – hence the name of ‘hard head’.