That when French ladies coloured their faces with an ointment containing anchusa the colour did not last long.
"The Old English Herbals"
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde
Botany had lavished there its most elegant drapery of ferns of all kinds, snap-dragons with their violet mouths and golden pistils, the blue anchusa, the brown lichens, so that the old worn stones seemed mere accessories peeping out at intervals from this fresh growth.
"The Village Rector"
Honore de Balzac
There is no gloom that can withstand May pouring itself out in the deep blue of anchusa and the paler blue of lupin, gushing out in the yellow of laburnum, tossing like the tides in the wind.
"The Pleasures of Ignorance"
Robert Lynd