Heliotropium arborescens, the garden heliotrope, is a species of flowering plant in the borage family Boraginaceae, native to Peru. Growing to tall and broad, it is a bushy, evergreen, short-lived shrub with dense clusters of bright purple flowers, notable for their intense, rather vanilla-like fragrance. Common names also include cherry pie and common heliotrope. Note that the common name "garden heliotrope" may also refer to valerian, which is not closely related.
Cultivation
As a perennial, is hardy in zones 9 to 11, and requires wintering indoors in zones 8 or colder. It is hardy down to about. It can also be grown as a half-hardy annual in those areas. Alternatively soft-wood cuttings may be taken in summer. During the Victorian era in England this plant gained great recognition, often appearing in gardens and the herbaceous borders of parks. They were also grown as standards. A vanilla-scented heliotrope was laid on the coffin of the American poetEmily Dickinson.
Cultivars
Its popularity may have become less in more modern times, but hardy and colourful cultivars, such as 'Princess Marina', have ensured that this plant still regularly appears in seed catalogues and garden centres. Other popular cultivars include, 'Mary Fox', the highly scented 'White Lady' or 'White Queen' and the taller 'Florence Nightingale'.
'Fragrant delight' has more fragrant purple flowers, and leaves with purple highlights.
'Marine' has large highly fragrant dark purple flowerheads to 15 cm diameter, and burgundy leaves.
'Sweet heaven' has paler fragrant flowers and is more heat-tolerant.
'White' has flowers that smell of almonds.
‘Chatsworth’, with purple flowers, has gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.
Toxicity
The seeds are poisonous. The ASPCA's Animal Poison Control Center article on heliotropes lists them as a substance which is toxic to horses and can induce liver failure in equines. The plant is not very palatable, but will be eaten by animals with no other forage; poisonings typically occur from ingestion of green plant material or material in hay. The toxic components can cause liver failure, referred to as "walking disease" or "sleepy staggers". Signs include weight loss, weakness, sleepiness, yawning, incoordination, yellowish discoloration to mucous membranes, neurologic problems secondary to liver failure. Animals may appear to be normal at first, then become suddenly affected; the syndrome progresses rapidly over a few days to a week.
Medicine
The purple coloration of the flower lent itself to the so-called "heliotrope cyanosis" that was characteristic of severely ill patients in the 1918 flu pandemic.
