NETTLE-LEAVED BELL-FLOWER. 131 



use them as a pot-herb. It has been suggested that at a 

 time when so many of our plants received semi-religious 

 titles, the Canterbury-bell may have been associated with 

 the sainted Thomas a Becket, as thousands of pilgrims 

 flocked yearly to his shrine in the cathedral, and a plant so 

 abundant in the district would be very familiar to them, and 

 would afterwards, whenever and wherever else seen, serve as 

 a memorial flower. Many of the old monkish names are 

 now dying out, but we may just point out, without staying 

 to point out the wherefore, that the bulbous crowfoot was 

 dedicated to St. Anthony, the ragwort to St. James, the 

 hypericum to St. John, the cowslip to St. Peter, while other 

 plants were associated with Saints Barbara, Barnabas, 

 Patrick, Christopher, and many others. 



The nettle-leaved bell-flower is a rather variable species, 

 but it will always be readily identified by its foliage and its 

 " rough sharp-pointed leaves, cut about the edges like the 

 teeth of a sawe, and so like the leaues of nettles, that it is 

 hard to know the one from the other, but by touching them." 

 The upper leaves are small, somewhat long in proportion 

 to their breadth, and upon very short foot-stalks, while 

 the lower ones are broad and large, heart-shaped, and 

 having long stems. The flower-stalks are few in number, 

 and spring from the axils of the upper leaves. The 

 corolla is campanulate or bell-shaped, hence the scien- 

 tific generic name; and the resemblance is so far 

 good that blue-bell, or bell-flower, is the popular name 

 for all the species. The five stiff- looking segments 

 of the calyx, and the five large anthers in the centre, 

 are other prominent features. The plant is a peren- 

 nial, and flowers during July, August, and Septem- 

 ber. It attains to a height of some two or three feet ; 



