Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/167

Rh ). The rosette of leaves from the root does not appear until after the flowers.

This is the true Blue-bell of Scotland. As we have indicated (page ), the Blue-bell of the Southron is the Wild Hyacinth. Scotsmen are very sensitive upon the point of the Hyacinth having so dear a name bestowed upon it, when it has already a sufficiently good and classical one, and there are few, if any, more certain ways of rousing a Scot than by exhibiting Scilla as the true Blue-bell, or by describing Campanula as the Hairbell. Others have found the plant a fruitful source of controversy on a philological point should it be spelled Hairbell or Harebell?&mdash;does its name refer to the slender hair-like stems, or to its habit of growing where hares delight to revel? As against Hairbell, which is descriptive of the plant, Harebell has no chance of retention among botanists, whatever philologists may say.

There are six species of Campanula included in the British flora, of which two are rare, and one of these is probably only an escape from cultivation. The characteristic of them all is a beautiful bell-shaped corolla with five lobes, five stamens, and the style with three to five stigmas. They are mostly perennial, and the flowers most frequently blue. C. rotundifolia has a creeping rootstock, and several slender-angled stems. The first formed leaves, near the ground, are more or less rotund in shape, and stalked, but as they occur higher up the stem they are more and more linear. The flowers are nodding or drooping, and swayed by the breeze. Heaths and pastures. July to September. The Nettle-leaved Bell-flower (C. trachelium) is an erect tall-stemmed (3 feet or more) hairy species, with leaves like nettles, with large purple flowers in a terminal panicle. Woody lanes and copses. August to October.