Touch Me Not
Peach-leaved Bellflower is one of the many plants that grow in natural oak/hornbeam woodlands, where it is found in the company of White Cinquefoil (Potentilla alba), Black Pea (Lathyrus niger), Wood Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum corymbosum), and Greater Stitch- wort (Stellaria holostea). Peach-leaved Bellflower is also found amid open shrub growth in hilly country, and is particularly abundant in therniophilous woods and forest margins.
At higher altitudes it also grows in open stands and in fresh, though rather dry clearings. Touch-me-not is native to the northern regions of the Eurasian landmass. It also grows on the western side of the United States. Its close relative, the Small-flowered Balsam (I. parvi flora Dc.), is an example of the extensive spread of a plant species.
Orchidaceous plants are a large worldwide family, numbering thousands of genera and species. Whereas their’ variety is greatest in the tropics, European orchids are rapidly making their way into the lists of endangered species.
Common in open woodlands, oakwoods, ashwoods, as well as in hedgerows and forest margins, from lowland to sub-Alpine elevations is another bellflower, C trachelium L. It has a random distribution in north-western Europe, but is more plentiful elsewhere.
Peach-leaved Bellflower is a slender perennial herb up to 120 cm in height. The leaves are also slender or oblanceolate, the top ones narrowly lanceolate to linear.
An interesting feature in the life of orchids is that, when flowering, the ovaries – in some cases the flower-stalks – in each blossom curl 180 around their axis. In this way, what is actually the upper perianth segment (sometimes lip-shaped) becomes the bottom segment. Broad lielleborine flowers from June until August.
