Alkanet

Hi,

My garden has loads of green alkanet growing. A few years ago ( before i'd realised what this was) someone told me it was comfrey, so i'd been composting it for quite some time before i found out otherwise. Now i know better, but given it's part of the same family as comfrey, I wondered if it is it advisable to compost the leaves and stems, leaving the roots and flowers to the local dump or should i remove all of it to the dump?

Is this the one with the prickly leaves and rather pretty small mid blue flowers?  It's a tough wild flower but it does tend to take over and the big black taproots go down to Australia and are a bugger to dig out.  Good for making a bright red dye, though, apparently!

I'd think composting the leaves would be okay, although I'd get rid of the roots unless you want it everywhere!  Comfrey makes, as you know, great green manure, but I'm not 100% certain about this 'cousin'.

Don't the bees just love it though?

Thanks for your comments. I'll continue composting it, if nothing else it's bulks it up, but will avoid the roots. I take it flowers are OK so long as they've not yet set seed?