Authors: L.  

Botanical Description

spreading by thread-like rhizomes (to 30cm or more in the wild). Leaves small, obovate, bright green, in rosettes. Flowers solitary, erect, very widely bell-shaped, with long spreading lobes that create a starry effect from a distance, 1.5cm in diameter, a unique shade of slate-blue. Western Alps, on stony ridges, streamside gravels and screes, usually where slates and shales are the bedrock. Not easy to please in cultivation, requiring an acid scree mixture and protection from excessive winter rain: prone to etiolation and aphids. Can be grown in deep pots in the alpine house, using a mixture largely of grit, and watering from below.

a, C. barbata; b, C. cenisia; c, C. cochlearifolia; d, C. zoysii;