Pale toadflax; purple honeysuckle

This was last week in my favourite park in this city, after a few nights of near and actual frost. There were lots of late blooms that day and this, a striped toadflax, was one of them.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, Linaria vulgaris, the yellow cousin of this plant, was very popular as one of those edible treats that kids know about but adults worry about or forget. We called it honeysuckle because we would pull out the flowers, bite off the bottom, and suck out the sweetness inside. Or so I was told -- that it was sweet. It seemed like a great idea and I did it dozens of time, perhaps hundreds, but with disappointment since I almost never, perhaps never, tased the sweetness I was told was in there.

But I never saw these bluish, or purplish ones back then. I don't know if they spread into this territory in the past sixty years; perhaps so. And only this week I learnt they are known as the pale or striped toadflax, Linaria repens. I'd rather call them purple honeysuckle.