Harebell.Campanula rotundifolia.
Found during July and August in rocky soil, along roadside thickets; in damp shade, or on exposed and barren uplands.
The stems of this lovely plant are very slender, like leafy wands, from 10 to 16 inches in height; they are firm and fine in fibre, smooth and shining, and bronzy-green.
The grass-like leaf is about an inch long, fine and thin and smooth; its color betrays the violet hues that temper all the green parts of the plant.
The blossom varies in size rather noticeably. Its corolla is shaped like a bell with 5 small pointed tips which curve outward to show the long lavender pistil with its malachite-green tip; the texture of the bell is delicately thin and yet firm, and the color an exquisite violet, which ranges from pale lavender, or even almost white, to a reddish-purple hue. The green calyx is 5-parted, its divisions very slender, half as long as the bell, and clinging closely to its shape. The many blossoms nod on thread-like stems.
In early spring the Harebell plant consists of a tuffet of small, round, slightly notched leaves, on spreading stems; these mostly disappear when the flowering stems begin to rise. In part, the swaying, flexile grace of gesture belonging to these flowers may be due to the light way in which the bells are caught in their tiny calices. When advanced in maturity the pistil becomes 3-parted and loses its vivid green tip. The Harebell is commonly credited with a love of shade, but it is frequently found in the crevices of exposed rock-ledges; and a favorite haunt, in one instance, is a bare mountain ridge, covered only by thick dry gray mosses, where these lovely bells nod amidst the Ebony Fern leaves (A. ebeneum), in thrifty vigor under the broad sunlight.