Indoor American Creeping Bellflower Gardens Take the Edge off Weeds

Summary: Indoor American creeping bellflower gardens change unruly outdoor garden flowers into ruly flowering houseplants in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) blooms from June to October; closeup of creeping bellflower's flower and leaf, Bozeman, southwestern Montana, September 24, 2008: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The crop yields, plant health and species diversity around fence lines and in berry patches, cultivated fields, ornamental beds, turf lawns and vegetable plots are compromised by outdoor American creeping bellflower gardens.

The perennial member in the Campanulaceae family of bellflower and harebell herbs and shrubs bears weed designations for such aggressive, disruptive, invasive misbehaviors in Alberta, Canada. The same designation can be considered through legislation consistent with membership of Canada, Mexico and the United States in the North American Plant Protection Organization (NAPPO). Richard Dickinson, in Weeds of North America, University of Chicago Press book published in 2014, describes NAPPO's "phytosanitary measures" as dealing with introduction of invasive plants.

Canada's Weed Seeds Order of 1986, municipal, provincial, state and territorial legislation and the United States' Plant Protection Act of 2000 enable similar designations outside Alberta.

Family ties, featured characteristics and translated scientific names furnish the common names garden harebell, purple bell and creeping bluebell, creeping campanula, rampion bellflower and rover bellflower.

Creeping bellflower, an English equivalent of the scientific name Campanula rapunculoides, gives friendlier impressions in containerized, indoor gardens than in outdoor beds, gardens, pots and yards. The moisture-grabbing, nutrient-robbing, shade-tolerant garden flower introduced into North America from Asia and Europe has biological advantages in prolific seed production and in rampant rhizome formation. The creeping, thick, tuberlike, white rhizomes invade shallow, underground soils so thoroughly that a dense clump of above-ground shoots and of below-ground roots quickly is formed.

Hormones from rhizomes and shoots, moisture and nutrients from soil and nutrients from photosynthesis join to jump seedlings into mature takeovers of American creeping bellflower gardens.

Biology keeps the seedling's cotyledons recognizable with 0.08- to 0.19-inch (2- to 5-millimeter) lengths, 0.04- to 0.12-inch (1- to 3-millimeter) widths, oval shapes and upward-curled margins.

Alternate-paired, mature, 1.18- to 2.76-inch- (3- to 7-centimeter-) long leaves look coarse-toothed along margins, heart-shaped, long-stalked and somewhat hairy along margins and upper surfaces lower down. Simple leaves farther up creeping bellflowers in American creeping bellflower gardens manage lance-shaped, stalkless looks and measure more toward the lower end of mature size ranges. Mature, 7.87- to 39.37-inch- (20- to 100-centimeter-) tall herbs need somewhat hairy, straight, unbranched stems to nurture floral clusters called inflorescences, fruit capsules and simple leaves.

Inflorescences occur as one-sided, stalked bunches called racemes that offer grape-, hyacinth- or lupine-like looks or as solitary flowers at axil unions of leaves with stems.

Blue to light purple, nodding, 0.79- to 1.18-inch- (2- to 3-centimeter-) long flowers put forth one pistil, five stamens, five united petals and five united sepals.

Fruiting stages in creeping bellflowers, first described by Swedish-born taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), quicken prolific production of as many as 3,000 seeds. Rounded fruit capsules require three to five pores to release elliptical, glossy, light brown, 0.06-inch- (1.5-millimeter-) long, 0.39-inch- (1-millimeter-) wide seeds for germination within 10 years. Seeds sometimes share the germination-friendly top 0.79 inches (2 centimeters) of soil with Indian tobacco, Campanulaceae family member and North American native not yet designated weedy.

Indoor American creeping bellflower gardens take the edge off unruly, weed-designated creeping bellflowers even though their equivalents never take the poison out of non-weed-designated Indian tobacco.

creeping bellflower's midsummer blooms, Ottawa, southeastern Ontario, east central Canada, July 10, 2008: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

closeup of creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) flower and leaf, Bozeman, southwestern Montana, Sept. 24, 2008: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Campanula_rapunculoides_(4970189759).jpg

creeping bellflower's midsummer blooms, Ottawa, southeastern Ontario, east central Canada, July 10, 2008: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creeping_Bellflower,_Ottawa.jpg

For further information:

"Campanula rapunculoides L." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/5500815

Dickinson, Richard; France Royer. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "14. Campanula rapunculoides." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 165. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358184