Creeping Bellflower

Invasive Species Information

What Is Creeping Bellflower - (Campanula rapunculoides)?

Habitat: Terrestrial
Distribution in Ireland:

Status: Established

Family name:

Common name/s:

Campanula rapunculoides reaches on average 30–80 cms of height, with a maximum of 120 cms. The stem is simple, erect and lightly pubescent and the leaves are usually shortly hairy. The basal leaves are triangular, narrow, with a heart-shaped or rounded base, jagged edges and are up to 12 cms long. The upper stem leaves are sessile, lanceolate and shortly stalked.

Creeping Bellflower flowers

Reproduction: Each plant can produce 15, 000 seeds and it also reproduces through its long tuberous root system.

Clover broomrape Biodiversity Medium Risk Invasive Species 14

Creeping Bellflower flower

The inflorescence consists of nodding spikelike racemes with numerous drooping flowers. The flowers are bright blue-violet (rarely white), 2 to 4 cm long, with short petioles standing to one side in the axils of the bracts. The bracts are quite different and smaller than the leaves. The sepals are lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, entire, wide at the base up to 2.5 mm. The corolla is bell-shaped, with five deep lobes slightly ciliate. The flowering period extends from June through September.

The flowers are pollinated by insects (bees, flies, butterflies, etc.) (entomophily). The fruit is a capsule with five pores near the base, where the seeds are spread.

This plant has its overwintering buds situated just below the soil surface (hemicryptophyte). It spreads by underground rhizomes and produces deep, taproot-shaped tubers. Both are white and fleshy. Because any piece of the roots can sprout into a new plant, it is extremely hard to eradicate.

How To Identify Creeping Bellflower?

Creeping Bellflower - Campanula rapunculoides ID Guide

Leaf:
Flower:
Stem/Twig:
Bark:

Fruit:

Smell:

Seed:

Root:

Creeping Bellflower leaves

Creeping Bellflower #4

Why Is Creeping Bellflower A Problem?

Creeping Bellflower is an alien (non-native) invasive plant, meaning it out-competes crowds-out and displaces beneficial native plants that have been naturally growing in Ireland for centuries.

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