Gentiana verna, the spring gentian, is a species of flowering plant in the family Gentianaceae, and one of its smallest members, normally only growing to a height of a few centimetres.

The conspicuous vivid blue (sometimes purplish-red or rarely white)[1] flowers are 1–2 cm in diameter, with a deeply five-lobed corolla; they are produced in late spring to early summer.

[4] Gentiana verna appeared on the design of a Great Britain stamp, issued in 1964 to mark the 10th International Botanical Congress held in Edinburgh.

Writer and botanist Stevan Jakovljević eulogized the flower in its Latin name at the end of his trilogy Srpska trilogija which writes of the Serbian soldiers who died during the Battle of Kajmakčalan and the Macedonian front during World War I (the flower grows on the soldiers' graves in the mountains of Kajmakčalan).

The flower is associated with the Alps, and gave its name to the trans-Alpine Blauer Enzian ("Blue Gentian") express train between Germany and Austria.