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Annual; stem up to 30 cm, slender, often branched at the base. Basal leaves up to 4 cm, lanceolate, obtuse; cauline leaves ovate-lanceolate, the upper acute. Hairs on the stem patent below, appressed above; those on the pedicels often patent. Inflorescence not leafy at the base, many-flowered, lax below, dense above, pedicels shorter than calyx in fruit. Calyx up to 4.5 mm in fruit, rarely deciduous, with soft deflexed, hooked hairs. Corolla up to 4 mm; limb c. 1.3 mm in diameter, saucer-shaped, pale yellow or cream at first, becoming pink, violet or even blue; tube pale blue to dark violet. Nutlets c. 1.2 x 0.8 mm, dark brown, with a wide rim.
Slender annual 1–5 dm, obscurely strigose to evidently hirsute-puberulent; lvs mostly 1–4 cm × 2–8 mm; “racemes” naked or with one or two leafy bracts near the base, not much if at all longer than the leafy part of the plant; fruiting pedicels 1–3 mm, evidently shorter than the 3–5 mm cal, ascending or somewhat spreading; cal-tube shortly uncinate-hispid; cor at first yellow or yellowish, ordinarily changing to blue, the limb 1–2 mm wide, not flat; nutlets shorter to occasionally longer than the style; 2n=64. Native of Europe, locally intr. in fields and roadsides; Que. to Va. May–July. (M. versicolor)
