CALIFORNIAN
BLUE-BELL
Family HYDROPHYLLACEAE
Nemophila species
Annual
Charming annuals from California and North America.
The flowers are bell-shaped.
Nemophila
Hardy Annual.
Four to eight inches.
Flowers of several colours, May to June.
Nemophila insignis, the best known of this family,
is one of the prettiest and most easily grown
of hardy annuals.
It is low-growing, with single
flowers of a real sky-blue with a white centre.
Sown either in September or in March, it grows
“like a weed”, and is one of the earliest
of the annuals to come into bloom.
If practicable, it should be sown in long lines
or good-sized plots; the real effect of its colour
is hardly seen except in quantity.
The seedlings should not remain crowded, but be
well thinned out.
Besides the blue Nemophila insignis, there is
a white and a pinkish-coloured form.
Other sorts are Nemophila atomaria, white with
black spots, and Nemophila discoidalis, purple-black
with white border.
Neither of these can compare in beauty with the
blue insignis.
Nemophila menziesii (syn. Nemophila atomaria) is of trailing
habit, with stems up to twenty inches long, four-inch
lobed leaves and solitary five-petalled bell flowers,
one inch across, of bright blue, changing to white
at the centre.
Other forms are var. alba, white-flowered; var.
crambeoides, with pale blue flowers veined purple;
var. discoidalis, with white flowers changing
to a brownish-purple at the centre;
var. marginata, with flowers of blue, margined
white.
There is also a large-flowered form, var. grandiflora.
All are easily grown in a well-drained loam is
a sunny, sheltered position, where the bright
blue flowers contrast well with other flowers
of pink or yellow.
Sow in March or April where the plants are to
bloom, and thin out, remembering the spread of
the plant.
They may be sown in autumn for spring flowering
in mild localities.
Propagate from seed.
The flowering season is from late June to September.
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