一年生风铃草 yi nian sheng feng ling cao

Campanula benthamii Wallich ex Kitamura; C. canescens Wallich ex A. Candolle (1830), not Roth (1827); C. veronicifolia Hance; C. wallichii Babu, nom. illeg. superfl.; Cephalostigma spathulatum Thwaites.

Plants annual. Stems erect, up to 45 cm tall, simple, or branched from base and thus caespitose, hispid. Basal leaves sometimes rosulate, shortly petiolate; blade spatulate or elliptic, withering early, base cuneate or attenuate, margin serrulate, apex acute. Cauline leaves winged-petiolate, 2-7 cm; blade spatulate, elliptic, or linear, base attenuate, margin serrulate or subentire, apex acute or acuminate. Cymes multiple, aggregated into a terminal panicle; pedicels unequal in length, those of upper flowers in a cyme longer. Hypanthium semiglobose to obconic, base acute; calyx lobes narrowly triangular, 3-5 mm. Corolla purple or blue-purple, campanulate, outside hispid, inside glabrous; lobes equaling tube. Style included. Capsules globose. Seeds yellow-brown, oblong or elliptic, compressed, ca. 0.3 mm, smooth. Fl. and fr. Mar-Apr.

Grassy slopes, roadsides; below 2000 m. Chongqing (Wushan), N Guangdong, Guizhou (Luodian), Shaanxi (Mianxian), Sichuan (Chengdu, Dujiangyan, Emei), Taiwan, Yunnan (Weishan) [Afghanistan, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam; Africa].

Cleistogamy may be the predominant reproductive strategy of this species, at least in China, as most specimens we examined had only cleistogamous flowers. The capsules produced by such flowers are of unequal size, with the apical flowers within a cyme producing larger capsules than the basal ones.