A soft dusty lavender-lilac, never harsh, with the same fully double ruffled Ball form as the blue. It is the cornflower for a scheme where electric azure would be too loud.
Be aware of what pastel does at a distance. The colour is lovely at arm's length and in a vase, and it more or less evaporates across a garden; from the far end of a border a drift of 'Mauve Boy' reads as a pale haze rather than as flowers. Plant it where it will be walked past, or grow it mainly for cutting, where soft lilac against white and cream is exactly the effect people pay florists for.
It self-seeds readily and makes informal colonies, though the volunteers drift towards paler mauve and eventually back towards blue. It is drought-tolerant once established and asks very little. Like all the tall cornflowers it wants supporting before it needs it rather than after, and it wants cutting hard and often to keep flowering past midsummer.
