Wild Flowers East of the Rockies 331 



BLUEBELL FAMILY (Campanulaceae). 



A small family of herbs with alternate leaves and 

 acrid, usually milky, juices. The flowers are reg- 

 ular and perfect and have a five-parted, usually bell- 

 shaped, corolla. 



BELLFLOWER (Campanula rapunculoides( (EU- 

 ROPEAN). This beautiful European species is a 

 frequent escape from gardens and is quite firmly es- 

 tablished in several localities in the Eastern States. 

 It is, of course, to be met with in the vicinity of 

 habitations and often alongside roads. As it is a 

 perennial its occurrence in the same places may be 

 looked for year after year. 



The simple stems are erect and quite tall, ranging 

 from 1 to 3 feet high. The toothed, lance-shaped 

 leaves alternate along the lower portion of the stem 

 and the bell-shaped, purplish flowers are in loose 

 spikes on the terminal portions. They are all in nod- 

 ding positions, seated in five-parted calyces, on slen- 

 der pedicels each subtended by a small bract-like 

 leaf. 



HAREBELL; BLUEBELL (Campanula rotundifol- 

 ia) is the "Blue Bells of Scotland" so familiar to us 

 in song and verse. It is a very slender-stemmed 

 species but very hardy, as attested by the altitudes 

 at which it is found on mountains. It gets it speci- 

 fic name, rotundifolia, from the little tuft of rounded, 

 toothed leaves that appear before the flowering stem, 

 and rarely last until the flowers appear. The flower- 

 ing stems are very slender and wiry, sparsely set 

 with linear leaves ; they usually branch near the sum- 

 mit, each division bearing a demure, drooping, violet 

 bell. It is found in bloom from June until Septem- 

 ber in rocky or sandy places in Canada and northern 

 United States. 



VENUS' LOOKING GLASS (Specularia perfoliata) 

 is a tall, wand-like annual with rounded, scallop-edged 

 clasping leaves and little 5-parted blue flowers in 

 their axils. Pound throughout the United States, 



