blue flax

blue flax (plural blue flaxes)

1. Any from three species of flax:
   1. Linum lewisii, native to North America; Lewis flax or prairie flax.
      • 1845, J[ohn] C[harles] Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-’44, Washington: Gales and Seaton, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 133:

        We made our halt at noon in a fertile bottom, where the common blue flax was growing abundantly, a few miles below the mouth of Thomas’s fork, one of the larger tributaries of the river.

      • 1968, Edward Abbey, “Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert”, in Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, McGraw-Hill; republished New York: Touchstone, 1968, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 222:

        But if the animals are few the flowers are plentiful, especially in the open glades and along the brook, where I find clusters of larkspur, blue flax and Sego lilies.

   2. Two very similar-looking species of perennial flax, native to Europe:
      1. Linum narbonense.
      2. Linum perenne; lint.

• blue flax on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Linum lewisii on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Linum lewisii on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Linum narbonense on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Linum narbonense on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Linum perenne on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Linum perenne on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons