Tall Bellflower, Campanula americana, is a tall plant of moist thickets and stream banks with a starlike blue flower. The lance shaped, toothed, leaves are in an alternate pattern along the stem. Medicinally, this plant has been used by the Iroquois and Meskwaki Indians as cough medicine, for whooping cough and tuberculosis. For whooping cough smash three roots and steep them for thirty minutes in a teacup filled with hot water. Then take three tablespoons before meals. A similar remedy may have been used to treat consumption also known as tuberculosis.

Tall Bellflower Sources:

Audubon Guides Box Set – Birds, Tree, Wildflowers & Mammals. Computer Software.Green Mountain Digital. Version: 2.3. Web. Jul 10, 2014.

Foster, Steven and James A. Duke. The Peterson Field Guide Series; A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America. 2nd. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Print. pg. 193

Herrick, James William. Iroquois Medical Botany. Ph.D. Thesis, New York: State University of New York, Albany 1977. Print. pg. 217

Moerman Daniel E., Native American Ethnobotany, Portland: Timber Press. 1998. Print. pg. 135

Newcomb, Lawrence. Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977. Print. pg. 216-217

United States Department of Agriculture. Natural Resources Conservation Services. Web.