Giant bellflower (Campanula latifolia)

Description: This plant has the ability to spread aggressively. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible and contains 400 mg of vitamin C. It also has a history as a medicinal plant.

Habit: Tall, coarse, upright, herbaceous, clump-forming perennial; grows 3-4 ft (less frequently to 5 ft).

Leaves: Medium green leaves along the stalk, 6 in long, smaller, narrower, pointed and eventually sessile as they go up the stems.

Stems: Rise up from basal rosettes of ovate-oblong, toothed, stalked, hairy.

Flowers: Large, tubular, bell-like, purplish-blue flowers (to 2.5 in long) appear in the upper leaf axils and in short terminal clusters (racemes).

Fruit and seeds: Self - fertile.

Habitat: Native from Europe to Kashmir; grows in full sun in cool northern climates and part shade in hot summer climates.

Reproduction: By seed or dividing the rootball.

Monitoring and rapid response: Hand-pulling.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from the Missouri Botanicals and the USDA PLANTS Database.

Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org).Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).

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