Harebell

Information on Harebell

Common Name: Harebell
Scientific Name: Campanula rotundifolia
Irish Name: Méaracán gorm
Family Group: Campanulaceae
Distribution: View Map (Courtesy of the BSBI)
Flowering Period


Click for list of all flowering by month
Harebell is not easily confused with other wild plants on this web site.


From July to October it is such a delight to find Harebell with their pure blue, bell-shaped, delicate flowers.  They nod and shake and dangle from thin, curving stems in few-flowering panicles. The 15mm bell flowers have a five-lobed corolla and calyx lobes which are very much shorted than the corolla.  The leaves are narrow on the stem but round at the base of the plant where they wither early.  The fruit develop as dry capsules.  This plant is found on limestone mountains, heath and dry grassland and dunes.  It is a native plant belonging to the family Campanulaceae.

I first identified this plant in 1973 at Rossadillisk, Co Galway and photographed it at Bishop's Quarter Beach in the Burren, Co Clare in 2002. 

If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre

Méaracán gorm translates into English as 'blue thimble' and this plant is also called Méaracán púca 'goblin's thimble'.  In Scotland, this plant is known as 'Bluebell.'

 'The green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil,
That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,
Bow down to; and the wind travels too light
To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;
The gossamers wander at their own will'.

October.   Edward Thomas (1878-1917)  

Harebell