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Peach-leaved bellflower

 

 

 

In the North Estonian meadows the full bloom time of eyecatching bellflowers has arrived. Both species almost seem to lack leaves, but they have basal leaves very close to the ground. They prefer lime-rich soils but are common flowers everywhere. The peach-leaved bellflower develops quite dense clumps because it has a short rhizome. There are three to six flowers on the stem and the diameter of the flowers is up to four centimetres. The flowers usually open from the tip of the inflorescence and downwards. On breaking the stem milky sap seeps out. A particularly splendid trumpet sound can be heard when a bumble-bee has doings in the flower ...

 

The size of the spreading bellflower’s flowers depends on where it grows – on fertile soil the stem is strong, the inflorescence large and branching, on poor soils small and thin, sometimes with only one flower.