Myosotis stricta appears to be a species badly known to many floristic workers in the Netherlands. Many specimens collected under this name in fact belong to other species, usually to M. ramosissima. The diagnostic value of several features of fruit calyx and leaves is discussed. As a result of the confusion the distribution map based on floristic inventory data (fig. 3) must be considered unreliable; only a map exclusively based on data of herbarium specimens (fig. 2) can be trusted. Probably M. stricta is a rare species in the Netherlands and has disappeared in some regions. Most of its recent localities are situated in the loess area in southern Limburg as well as along the rivers Meuse and Rhine. Together with other Myosotis species, it constitutes an ecological series: M. ramosissima—M. stricta—M. discolor—M. arvensis. In this order these species are decreasingly heliophilous and thermophilous and are increasingly characteristic of weed vegetations on arable and fallow land.