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Clustered bellflower

 

 

This year’s midsummer time delights us with abundant blooms. The Midsummer flowers are embellished by the beautiful violet-blue clustered bellflowers, on average half a metre tall.

 

Dry meadows, roadsides or ditch banks are well suited as habitats for the clustered bellflower; we also find it in the outskirts of parks - always near deciduous trees - and sometimes in a sparse forest.

 

The flowers of the clustered bellflower are concentrated in the top of the stem, in umbels, and thus do not resemble the other graceful bellflowers. But let us examine the plant closer: why is this so – the flowers of the clustered bellflower have no stalks. The flowers smell modestly and faintly. The bristly bellflower (Campanula cervicaria), that has flower stalks, is quite similar to the clustered bellflower, but its stems and leaves have dense, bristly hairs, and it is a rarely found bellflower species.

 

The foliage of the clustered bellflower is dense and visible from spring until  late autumn.

 

Meadow with clustered bellflowers