CAMPANULA (bell-flower), in botany, a genus of plants (family Campanulaceae) containing about 30o species, found in the temperate parts of the northern hemisphere, chiefly in the Mediterranean region. The name is taken from the bell-shaped flower. The plants are perennial, rarely annual or biennial, herbs with spikes or racemes of white, blue or lilac flowers. Several are native in Great Britain; panula rotundifolia is the bell (q.v.) or Scottish bluebell; a common plant on pastures and heaths, the delicate slender stem bears one or a few drooping, shaped flowers. Many of the cies are grown in gardens for their elegant flowers; the dwarf forms are excellent for pot culture, rockeries or fronts of borders. C. Medium, Canterbury bell, with large blue, purple and white flowers, is a handsome biennial, of which there are numerous varieties. C. persici f olia, a ennial with more open flowers, is also a well known border plant, with numerous forms. C. erata, which has sessile flowers crowded in heads on the stems and branches, found native in Great Britain in chalky and dry pastures, is known in numerous varieties as a border plant. There are also a number of alpine species suitable for rockeries. The plants are easily cultivated. The perennials are propagated by dividing the roots or by young .cuttings in spring, or by seeds.
In North America there are about 20 native species of bell flower, widely distributed throughout the continent. Among these are the tall bellflower (C. americana), found in moist woods from New Brunswick to South Dakota and southward to Florida and Arkansas, which grows 6 ft. high, with shallow, blue flowers, an inch across, borne in a dense spike often 2 ft.
long; the harebell (C. rotundifolia) found from Labrador to Alaska and southward to New Jersey, Nebraska and California, and the California bell-flower (C. prenanthoides), a delicately beautiful plant, native to wooded mountain slopes from Monterey to southern Oregon. In the north-eastern United States and adjacent Canada the creeping bellflower (C. rapunculoides), the nettle-leaved bellflower (C. Trachelium) and the clustered bell flower (C. glomerata) have become widely naturalized.