Wildflowers always provide a beautiful, colorful display, no matter where you see them.
Piper’s Harebell (Campanula piperi), also called Piper’s Bellflower or Scottish Bluebell, is found in both alpine and subalpine habitats of the northern hemisphere. Also native to wooded areas, meadows, streams, cliffs and mountainous areas, there are more than thirty varieties in the wild. The name harebell comes from a time when people believed that it only grew in places used by hares and that witches used the juice from the flowers to change into hares.
A hardy perennial rhizome with numerous varieties, it’s a plant with thin stems and dense clusters of basal leaves. It blooms drooping, bell-shaped blue-violet, pink or white flowers. Its flower clusters can reach a size of one to two feet (30-60 centimeters) in height.
The flower petals are fused together to form a bell-like shape about fifteen millimeters long with five pointed green sepals or petals directly underneath the flower. The lobes of the petals are triangle-shaped and will curve slightly outwards, blooming on long, thin stems in clusters, in late spring or early fall.
These flowers can pollinate themselves, but are often pollinated by bees. The entire plant is self-fertilizing.
Basal leaves are rounded or heart-shaped leaves that are toothed. The leaves grow on long, thin flowering stems with the upper leaves not containing a stem. If the plant is injured, or leaves or flowers broken, it bleeds a white, milky sap.
The seeds are developed inside of a small capsule-like pod that is about three to four mm in diameter and are released by pores at the base of this pod. Seeds can be propagated by simply dropping them on the ground in the spring. The seedlings are rather tiny, but well-established plants will do well despite tall grasses and weeds. Clumps of harebells can be divided and re-planted elsewhere.
Native to the drier, lower nutrient grasslands and heaths in the Northern Hemisphere it will colonize cracks in walls, dunes and cliff faces. It prefers climates that present an average temperature that is below zero degrees centigrade in the winter and above ten degrees centigrade during the summer or warmer months. Cold and moist conditions can limit its growth.
The Harebell has been dedicated to Saint Dominic and it is the country flower of Yorkshire in Britain.
Once used in the manufacture of blue dye, used in Scottish tartans, it is the symbol of the MacDonald clan.
