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Turbinate Bell-Flower
Campanula turbinata.
THIS pretty bell-flower illustrates in a pleasing manner the prevailing difference between the flowers of the mountain and those of the plain. The rambling botanist of large experience can tell us in a moment the kind of country whence a plant has been derived, even if he cannot name the country or the plant off-hand. When he finds the leaves small and in a compact, tuft, and the flowers large and somewhat prominently displayed, he will declare it to be a plant of the mountains, accustomed to a strong light, and to frost and snow and keen breezes. The plants of the valley are by comparison large and leafy, with flowers less conspicuous; and however beautiful, as many of them are, they lack the tufty, closely-packed, pin-cushion growth and brilliant colours of the true mountain flowers. This bell-flower may be compared with the average of garden campanulas advantageously for purposes of instruction. We find no tall stem, no free, leafy growth, and no drawn-out spike of flowers. The whole thing is, as one may say, in a nutshell, for the mountain plant cannot afford to make a tall stem and to develop its flowers slowly. Its conditions of life are unfavourable to the development of abundant material; it must make the very most of a short summer with a pure, strong light, and many sudden transitions from extreme heat to extreme cold. The sunshine roasts one at midday in many a flowery spot on the Alps and the Pyrenees; and yet, in the very height of the summer, the night frost is often keen enough to make the herbage crackle beneath the feet of the late wanderer, as also of the early riser. The Alpine flowers have to live through such extreme conditions; and if they do not ripen their seeds and scatter them quickly their race must soon come to an end. Therefore they have not time to grow tall and leafy and luxurious; they hug down close to the ground to escape the keen wind, and concentrated life is of more importance to them than a luxurious display of delicate green garments.
The turbinate campanula is a native of the Carpathian mountains and Transylvania, and when transferred to the garden is essentially a rock plant, requiring a dry, sunny position, and a light, deep, well-drained soil. It is at once beautiful and interesting, the smallness of the leaves and the largeness of the flowers rendering it conspicuous, while the fine blue-purple colour and bold cup-shaped form of the flowers compel attention in detail. It may be grown in the common border where the conditions are favourable, the soil being sandy and the situation open, when it forms large leafy tufts, from which the flowers rise freely during the summer.
As rock plants the smaller campanulas have especial claims on our attention. The following will gratify the collector of such things:--C. alpina, a silky or woolly little herb, bearing a loose pyramid of deep blue flowers. C. caespitosa, very dwarf and tufty, the flowers deep blue. C. carpatica, a very fine rock and border plant, well known for its neat cushion-like growth and lovely flowers, which are blue or white, or combining both colours; this will thrive in almost any border, and in the very heart of London. C. garganica, somewhat like the last, but more inclined to run, and the flowers are expanded, and have white centres. C. hederacea, an exquisite gem, creeping, with small, ivy-like leaves and bluish-purple flowers; a bog plant, very plentiful in the southern counties on marshy, uncultivated lands, the companion commonly of the beautiful buck-bean (Menyanthes trifoliata). C. isophylla, a handsome dwarf plant with pale blue flowers; it requires a limestone soil, and is a good plant for a wall or ruin. C. Raineri, very dwarf and pretty, the flowers blue, the plant adapted for either rockery or border in well-drained sandy-soil. C. rotundifolia, the well-known "hare-bell" of the hedgerow and the mountain. It is a good garden plant adapted for rockery or border in any light soil, and there are three or four distinct varieties in cultivation. Once upon a time, when botanising at Hayfield, under Kinder Scout, we found within an hour fully a score of distinct varieties of the common hare-bell, the flowers being of several shades of blue, pink, and white; and doubtless they are to be found there still by any diligent seeker in the summer-time.