Flax

Linum usitatissimum

Linaceae

Blue flower, brown seed, linen in the stem — a cool-season crop for porridge, oil, and cloth.

Culinary seed. Oil goes rancid fast. Do not eat the ornamental Linum of the border in quantity.

Parts used: Ripe seed
Traditional notes: Kitchen seed · Traditional dry-bowel tea · Soothing mash
Grow · USDA 6b: Cool-season annual Broadcast in early spring, thick, like a cover crop. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul
Harvest: Seed when capsules tan and rattle; fiber earlier, a different crop.

A garden strip is a tin of seed, not a mill.
Grind at use. Whole seed is a pebble.

Safety

Bowel obstruction Unfresh oil

Lore

Egyptian mummies were wrapped in it. The word linen is flax; the word linseed is the same plant after the weaver left. Irish and Baltic fields ran blue in flower. A medieval tax was sometimes paid in ells of linen, which is to say in flax that had been beaten, spun, and woven by hand.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.