My Favorite Basil

The flowers are quite small as you can see from this photo: http://www.pbase.com/britestar/image/168075892

The above photo was taken while the flowers were still on the growing plant.

However, since then, I've been trimming the flower stalks off as soon as I see them & before they bloom. Discouraging flowering allows the herb plant to produce edible leaves for a longer period of time before eventually dying off. Most basils are annuals & will bolt (and die off) in high Summer temperatures. However despite our very hot Summer, this plant(and all of my other Basil plants with different looking flowers), is still producing leaves to harvest. I attribute part of that to my removing the flowers & fooling the plant's life cycle.

The flowers are quite pretty and add nicely to a miniature (less than 3 inch tall overall) indoor herb bouquet of flowers & leaves.