Harebell

Harebell is a slender perennial of the bellflower family that spreads by seed and creeping rhizomes over dry, poor grassland and heath, and often takes hold in cracks in walls, on cliff faces and on settled dunes. Its long-stalked basal leaves are rounded, which gives the species its name, rotundifolia or round-leaved, but they tend to wither early, while the leaves along the flowering stems are long and narrow. On very fine stalks it hangs nodding bells, usually of five fused petals in pale to mid violet-blue, which in the British Isles open from July to November. By the reckoning of Plants of the World Online it grows from Iceland through Britain and Ireland to Spain and east across Europe and Asia to the Pacific coast of Russia. In Scotland it is simply the bluebell, and it is often confused with the common bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta; it is also the county flower of Yorkshire. In England and Ireland it belonged to faeries and witches: witches were said to put it in their flying ointment and to use it to turn themselves into hares, its bells were said to ring a warning to hares, and faeries took the flowers for bells, caps and cups; as a witch's plant it was unlucky to pick. Its blue stood for true love, and in England whoever wore it had to speak the truth. Cunningham adds that turning a flower inside out without tearing it brings you, in time, the one you love.