Bellflowers - Naturalist engraving - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Reproduction engraving of: Campanulés

Original title Campanariae - Glockenpolypen

Poster of Campanulina - Cnidarians of the class Hydrozoa (Order Bellflowers)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Cnidarian Phylum (Cnidaria)
Main class of Hydraids (Hydrozoa)
Class Hydrozoa (Hydroidea)
Order of Bellflowers (Campanariae)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Campanariae - Campanulés :

Bellflowers are closely related to tubular hydroids (Tubulariae, Plate 6) and sertulariae (Sertulariae, Plate 25); but they are distinguished by the fact that the delicate bodies of the polyps can retract into strong, horny protective capsules, borne on thin, ringed stalks. The individuals that make up bellflower colonies have always adopted two or three different forms as a result of the division of labor. The feeding or hydrant polyps have at their tip a mouth opening surrounded by a crown of mobile tentacles (sensory tentacles and prehensile arms); often the mouth is extended into a proboscis (Fig. 5); their protective capsule (hydrotheca) forms a bell-shaped calyx, the edge of the opening of which is often elegantly serrated (Fig. 3). In contrast, the protective capsule of reproductive polyps or gonophores is generally larger, urn-shaped, with a shorter stalk or sessile (gonangia). Mouthless reproductive animals, lacking a tentacle crown, either remain attached to the colony and produce sexual products in their gastric wall, giving rise to polyp larvae (planulae) (Figs. 3 and 4); or they transform into more highly organized medusae which, swimming freely, only become sexually mature later (Figs. 1 and 2); the fertilized eggs of these medusae again give rise to polyps. Hydromedusae which are thus in alternation of generations with bellflowers belong to the order of sail jellyfish or leptomedusae (Plate 36).

Species present on the Campanulates - Campanulina naturalist board :

• Campanulina pinnata
• Campanulina tenuis
• Campanularia ptychocyathus
• Opercularella lacerata
• Ophiodes mirabilis
• Hypanthea hemispaerica
• Obelaria geniculata
• Obelia lucifera