BELLFLOWER FAMILY 219 



tia, sometimes takes exuberant possession of waste land, 

 and even intrudes in orange groves and other cultivated 

 grounds, where it spreads long stems and lobed leaves 

 over the sand, climbs on fences and shrubs, and makes it- 

 self generally at home. Like our other vines of this family, 

 the balsam apple has little yellow five-lobed flowers, but 

 its yellow fruit is like nothing else under the Florida 

 sun: oval or broadly spindle-shaped in form, three to six 

 inches in length, and extremely warty in appearance, it 

 bursts open when ripe and displays large seeds gaudily em- 

 bedded in crimson pulp. In cooler climates, where it can- 

 not grow as a weed, the balsam apple is cultivated as an 

 ornamental vine, and by Chinese the fruit is used in a 

 conserve. 



Graceful wild relatives of the cultivated cucumbers and 

 melons trail over the ground in Florida, or climb on way- 

 side fences, unhampered by the burden of producing over- 

 grown fruit for market. Melothria pendula, a pretty vine 

 with small lobed leaves, apes the watermelon, and ripens 

 smooth oblong fruit, only half an inch to an inch in 

 length, but similar in form and in mottled markings to 

 its gigantic cousin. 



The bur gherkin, Cucumis Anguria, may be eaten like 

 the cucumber, and when planted by trellises covers them 

 with a screen of deeply lobed, roundish leaves, among 

 which hang prickly oval fruit, one to two inches long. 



BELLFLOWER FAMILY (Campanulaceae) 



Small herbaceous plants. Flowers regular, blue or purple, 

 5-lobed. Leaves alternate. Fruit a capsule. 



Campanula floridana. Bellflower. Flowers blue or purple, 

 bell-shaped, small, in terminal racemes, buds drooping. 

 Stems angled, very slender, 6-15 in. long. Leaves narrow, 

 about 1 in. long. Swamps, growing among grasses. Bloom- 

 ing in spring and summer. Fla. peninsula. 



