Cornflower? Which one?!

I wasn't sure whether to put this here, or in the identification forum...

We have some lovely short-stemmed blue flowers in the "grass" in our garden. When we first moved in, there were just the three straggly plants. I've carefully mown around them, and they are now over a lot of the higher end of the garden, reaching about 1/3 the way down (to just above the herb, or "eye" bed).

These are about 6-10 inches high, and each flower is about 3/4 inch across.

A slightly better photo?

The farmer on the opposite side of the valley has established "nature strips" on the edges of his fields. This spring, he ploughed all of them (at a different time to the planting ploughing of the fields themselves), and on one field, has obviously sown some wildflower seed - the result is stunning!

Some of these cornflowers are flowering white, and there is even a rich deep burgundy.... As you can tell, this part of my daily dog-walk is done at half speed!!

But I'm left with the question - which one is the cornflower, and what is the other?!!

 

Cornflowers have a stunning colour That's about all I know about them - so not much help !

 

Ahh, I had the name "scabious" going around the back of my head, so I just googled it.

I think what I have in my garden is scabious, don't know which one...

What is growing across the valley is centaurea cyanus, or cornflower. I will see if a seedhead or two can fall into my doggy bag on the way back. I am normally very good about wildflower protection, but...
- these nature strips were sown earlier this year, I saw the farmer do it!
- there are 100s of metres of the strip, as it goes around at least two sides of a large field, the strip is 10 metres wide
- I will take one seed head per plant, from no more than a few plants

 

Can we see the leaf on the blue flowers in your grass please?
There are two nice dwarf growing Scabious, columbiara and graminifolia plus Jasione montana which looks like a Scabious.

 

This is the general impression you get, just all stems...


An envelope under a stem, so you can see what little leaf there is



And this final shot shows the form of each plant (this one has just three stems), and also shows the delicacy of the flower - for scale, I used a C5 envelope.

 

Looking at that I would go for the Jasione.

 

@Palustris , I have plucked a stem (right down to the base of the plant), and taken some photos inside, for more balanced light.
The stem, full opened flower, and a seed head. (Paper is a sheet of A4)


A close up of the flower

A close up of the stem, with leaves (what leaves this plant has!)