Linum marginale, known by the common name of 'Native Flax' or 'Australian Flax', is a short lived perennial flowering herb, native to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. A slender, wispy, upright plant, growing to around 1 metre high, Native Flax is often overlooked when not in flower. It should not be confused with species of Wahlenbergia

Wahlenbergia

Wahlenbergia is a genus of between 150-270 species of flowering plants in the family Campanulaceae, with a cosmopolitan distribution except for North America; the highest species diversity is in Africa and Australasia...

, which occurs in the same area and can appear similarly. Like most species of Linum

Linum

Linum is a genus of approximately 200 species in the flowering plant family Linaceae, native to temperate and subtropical regions of the world. It includes the Common Flax Linum (flax) is a genus of approximately 200 species in the flowering plant family Linaceae, native to temperate and...

, Linum marginale can be used to produce useful fibre

Linen

Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....

, but is not grown on a commercial level for this purpose.
Native flax has small linear blue green leaves, often pushed quite close to the stem. To the untrained eye from a distance, in may appear to have no leaves.
Unlike most other species of flax

Flax

Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...

 which have yellow flowers, Linum marginale beaks into sprays of large, electric blue flowers in spring and early summer. The flowers (around 3 cm across) have five petals and form at the top of each wiry stem of the plant. Flowers are replaced in summer by small, globular, papery capsules, about 3 mm across, containing a cluster of buff coloured, sesame

Sesame

Sesame is a flowering plant in the genus Sesamum. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for its edible seeds, which grow in pods....

-like seeds. Like many southern Australian flowers, the plant dies back in summer

Summer

Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...

, but reshoots the following autumn

Autumn

Autumn is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter usually in September or March when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier....

when the rains return.