Confused? I don't think I am anymore.
Back in 96, I purchased a plant called Adenophora confusa from a catalogue service in the US. It was described as a plant that only a Botanist could distinguish from a Campanula. The catalogue described the flowers as "drooping and in racemes and the plants are even more durable and long lived than Bellflowers." The flowers are as the catalogue describes an excellent blue with no enemies on the colour chart. It goes on to say that it flowers in July and August and once established it does not like to be moved.
It has been in the garden ever since and began to spread, even into the lawn. I thought it would be easy to control given it didn't like to be moved but I discovered when I started to dig it up that it had tuber like roots and lots of them. I have been digging out for the last several years and I thought I might have succeeded last year.
Surprise, it is still there. At about the time that I started digging it up, I decided to check a book on weeds and I discovered a weed listed as Campanula rapunculoides (creeping bellflower). The description in the weed book is almost identical to the description in the US catalogue. The weed book goes on to describe the root system as "white creeping and the rhizome is thick and somewhat tuber-like making the plant somewhat difficult to eradicate." Hmmm sounds like my adenophora.
Still not convinced, I decided to check my copy of the Botanical Garden vol II by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix. Now I'm quite sure that my adenophora is truely a campanula. But it is so pretty, do I really want to get rid of all of it. Maybe I'll just keep a little clump of it - if I can keep it little ... It really is a great blue after all.
At a gettogether of Master Gardeners last night, I asked about this plant that we saw in a Master Gardeners garden. They all felt that it is Campanula rapunculoides.
ReplyDeleteIt seems we all have a story about this plant. I bought it under another name and one member of our Group saw it at the side of the road, loved the colour, an brought it home to her garden. She tells me that she has been trying to get rid of it ever since.
So I am not only one? My strawberries were replaced by these bells. The root system is unreal! My friend actually asked me for a clump. Poor her!! I am still digging and sifting the soil to get rid of it. But for a while, it was nice to look at :)
ReplyDeleteJaro
Hello Bruce,
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm glad to see this post. I spent most of the summer trying to determine whether a garden client of mine had the "real" Adenophora or the "Evil Twin" Campanula rapunculoides. My research took me to one of the world experts on the family Campanulaceae who confirmed that, indeed, this was the real thing. Interestingly, he also said that in all his visits to retail garden stores, he had yet to find anything but C. rapunculoides. The plant my client had was bought from a reliable heirloom grower in the northeast U.S.