CAMPANULA. 
and in flower, too, so narrow and starved-looking that one recognises 
the plant at once, as one has sometimes seen it in gardens. But at 
the glacier-level, suddenly what a change! For there, beside the 
stream beds, the plant makes masses of hazy violet-blue, some hundreds 
of yards across, growing in nothing but perfectly pure granite dust 
among the rounded boulders. Here it is indeed in character—develop- 
ing into a glorified mimic of C. Bellardiz, in deeper tones of blue, with 
finer, more wiry, more abundant stems, each carrying one flower, of 
much the same size and shape, but with five-folded lobes, and the 
curious punched-out hole at the base of each segment, that has given 
the plant its name. It should be seen in full bloom to be believed ; 
and also to be collected, for the long, narrow-tubed bells that are seen 
in cultivation by no means represent the best of C. excisa, which can 
develop into splendid full expanding bells, amazing in their pro- 
fusion and delicate loveliness of form and colour, varying to paler 
tones, and sometimes to pure white. C. excisa has long been a great 
difficulty in culture—half that difficulty arising from the fact that 
attempts can only be made with nursery stuff, over-propagated for 
the market, and thereby weakened beyond much hope of recovery. 
But experiment with a hearty wad from the moraines of the Belvedere, 
and stick it into sand to begin with, and there should be no subsequent 
trouble. Sometimes one has heard of the plant thriving in the moss 
on shady rocks in the North; this suggests a piece collected from the 
lower woodlands, and reminiscent of its former habit, straggling and 
frail, coming up in a new corner every year. The glacial forms are 
of a far more ample splendour, forming compact mats from a central 
fine white tap, rather as is the way of C. caespitosa. Such should be 
planted in a very loose mixture of one part leaf-mould to two of the 
very coarsest Redhill sand, such as is used to cover the floor of a 
canary’s cage, and then, in a few months’ time—especially if that 
bed be watered underground—you will be hewing up stout clumps 
of it as a weed, and casting it out upon your friends. It can also be 
well grown in fine and gritty moraine, if well supplied with water ; 
the question as to its absolute or only partial antipathy to lime has 
not been settled ; all one can say is that by the light of nature it is 
easier to follow nature’s hints and treat the plant, at all events at 
first, as resolutely calciphobe. 
C. expansa, an annual in the kinship of C. rapunculus ; as are also 
C. phrygia, Kotschyana, ghilanea, sindjarensis, fastigiata, stellaris, 
dichotoma, Reuteriana (big blue flowers), rimarum, Balansae, dimor- 
phantha, Raveyi, propinqua, and delicatula. 
C. farinulenta. See under C. rotundifolia. 
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