''Bartsia alpina'' is a species of
perennial
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...
flowering plant, known by the common name alpine bartsia
or velvetbells. It is found in the mountainous regions of Europe and also occurs in Iceland, Greenland and north‐eastern Canada.
Description
''Bartsia alpina'' is a hemiparasitic perennial plant with a woody rhizome, growing to a height of between . The stem is erect and sometimes branched, hairy and purple in colour. The leaves are in opposite pairs, with oval leaf blades up to long and toothed margins. At the base of the plant, the leaves are green, but higher up they are tinged with purple. The corolla is dark purple and is about long. It is narrow at the base and has two lips, an obtuse upper lip and a smaller lower one, with three blunt, equal-sized lobes. It has four stamens fused to the corolla and two ovaries fused to the style. The fruit is an oval brown capsule.
Distribution and habitat
''Bartsia alpina'' has a European Arctic-montane distribution, and is also known from North America. It occurs in the mountainous regions of northern Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and in the
Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
and other mountains in Central Europe, as far south as the
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
and south‐west Bulgaria; it also occurs in Iceland, Greenland and north‐eastern Canada.
[
It has a very restricted distribution in the British Isles, occurring only in a few locations in upland areas in northern England, and in the central ]Scottish Highlands
The Highlands ( sco, the Hielands; gd, a’ Ghàidhealtachd , 'the place of the Gaels') is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Sco ...
.[ It used to occur in damp pasture, in basic flushes and runnels and wet, steep, species-rich banks, but it has largely been eliminated from these habitats by over-grazing and trampling by livestock. It has persisted better away from grazing animals in ledge communities on ]mica-schist
Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes ...
crags.
References
External links
*
*
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland
USDA Plant Classification
{{Taxonbar, from=Q162552
alpina
Alpina Burkard Bovensiepen GmbH & Co. KG is an automobile manufacturing company based in Buchloe, in the Ostallgäu district of Bavaria, Germany that develops and sells high-performance versions of BMW cars.
Alpina works closely with BMW and ...
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Parasitic plants