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Campanulaceae family

Marsh Bellflower Campanula aparinoides

Native Specialist-bee host
Deer-resistant — Low palatability to browsing deer. Usually passed over, but no plant is truly deer-proof when food is scarce.

Marsh Bellflower is a perennial wildflower native to Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 2 ft and blooms May in part shade – shade, with brown fruit. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Palustricodon aparinoides, the marsh bellflower, is a species of flowering plant in the family Campanulaceae. It is native to cool-temperate areas of central and eastern Canada and the north-central and eastern United States, and it has been introduced to Washington state and Finland. A perennial herb, it is an obligate wetland species. Under its synonym Campanula aparinoides it has been assessed as Least Concern. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
High moisture
Soil pH
6–7.5
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam), Fine (clay)
Hardiness
USDA zone 4+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT), lower-confidence call — Flower colour
Height
2 ft
Spacing
1.5–2 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
Slow
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Rhizomatous
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
Broadleaf · fine texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Brown
Flower colour
Blue AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos — lower-confidence (a more subjective call, often an inconspicuous flower); not a botanical record
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed, Bare root
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
No known commercial source
Deer browsing
Low often deer-resistant
Resprouts if cut
No
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated OBL on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · May — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Campanula is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (27) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[18] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[19] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[21] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[22] Ecological value — GloBI · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[24] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[25] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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