Herbariuma Backpackers project
All plants

Small bellflower

Campanula erinus

Family · Campanulaceae · Harmless

Small bellflower (Campanula erinus)Small bellflower (Campanula erinus)
Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0

The smallest of the Iberian bellflowers, with pale blue flowers of a few millimetres hidden among the leaves. It grows in wall cracks and on stone, and goes entirely unnoticed unless you look for it.

Where it grows

Walls and rocks · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside

Also known as

annual bellflower

In flower

How to tell it

A tiny annual, five to twenty centimetres, forked from the base and covered in rough hairs. Small leaves with coarse teeth. Pale blue or whitish flowers with five narrow lobes, sitting in the forks of the branches.

What it is confused with

No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.

What it is for

No use. It is worth it as proof that there is flora to see even on a dry stone wall, and for teaching you to look at what measures less than a centimetre.

Sources