looduskalender.ee

 

Spreading bellflower

 

 

Bellflowers grow all over Estonia and this year we can pick the beautiful flowers for the Midsummer chaplet.

 

Traditions tell that coming from the Midsummer night fire girls pick nine kinds of flowers to make a Midsummer chaplet, setting it on the head only at a crossroad. After that you must not look back, speak to anyone or reply when being talked to. At home the Midsummer chaplet is placed under the pillow, in order to see one’s future fiancé in a dream.

 

That we have to do with a bellflower a student of flowers can see easily. It is more difficult to find the correct species name, quite a number of different bellflowers grow in Estonia.

 

The size of the spreading bellflower’s plant and flowers depends on the habitat. On fertile soils the stem is sturdy, the flower large and branching; on poor soils it is small and delicate, sometimes only with a single bell. The corolla is divided into five pointed lobes, separated at about half-way and turning outwards. The flowers have no scent, coloured lilac or with some additional reddish hue. Sometimes white flowers can be found.

 

The plant is biennial, and in the first year only the rosette of leaves develop. In the second year the bellflower blooms. It has generally one stem, the branching only occurs at the upper part of the stem, and the more splendid ones may carry up to some twenty flower whorls.  

 

The spreading bell-flower feels at home in habitats with a sparse vegetation – roadsides, fields, wasteland and where wild boar have rooted in the soil.