Delphinium consolida

Consolida regalis (formerly Delphinium consolida), the forking larkspur or field larkspur, is an erect annual herb of the Ranunculaceae family native to Europe and western Asia and once a familiar weed of European cornfields, now much rarer through intensive herbicide use. The plant grows thirty to eighty centimetres tall from a slender taproot that may penetrate half a metre into the soil. The stem is hairy and freely branching, bearing alternate leaves divided into many narrow, almost thread-like segments. From May through August the loose, open inflorescence carries showy deep blue or violet-purple flowers, each with five petaloid sepals, the uppermost prolonged backward into a slender spur fifteen to eighteen millimetres long. The fruit is a slender single follicle. All parts, especially the seeds (containing up to 1.4 per cent of alkaloids), are seriously toxic.