English and Spanish bluebells

First, I apologise for the recent “break in transmission”. I’ve been away for a long weekend at a family wedding where I stayed in what must be the only decent hotel in England with absolutely no internet access of any kind (except for the front desk)! Then a day dashing about, flight back the US, my wife judy’s birthday… Anyway, normal service is now resumed.

Just before leaving our English home for the wedding I visited what may well be England’s finest bluebell wood, Short Wood in Northamptonshire. Voted England’s most popular wildflower in poll a couple of years ago, the bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, spreads to form wide rolling oceans of colour in many deciduous woods and even along hedges and roadsides. Over half world’s population grows in Britain, and I understand that nowhere else do they spread so prolifically. The bulbs were once used to make glue for book binding.

Occasionally white-flowered forms turn up amongst the sea of blue – you may spot a few in the picture – and also ones with paler, misty lilac flowers. It’s also, I see, naturalised in a few places in south east Pennsylvania and even as far north as New York, not far from us in nearby Sullivan County (anyone know exactly where?).

In England, however, it’s under threat from an invader from the south – the Spanish bluebell, Hyacinthoides hispanica. But rather than being crowded out, it’s starting to suffer slow death by hybridisation. The Spanish bluebell, as you can see from the picture taken just outside the wedding hotel in Lincolnshire, is altogether more stout and robust; it’s also more vigorous. You can also tell them apart this way: in the Spanish bluebell the flower spike stands upright at the tip; in the English bluebell, the tips hangs over (see pictures). The danger is that the Spanish bluebell, and hybrids, will supplant the less vigorous English bluebell, especially as the climate warms and makes growing conditions even more to the liking of the southerner.

The Spanish bluebell is often grown in gardens, from where it escapes into the wild or from where it’s discarded in the countryside by thoughtless gardeners when it proves too vigorous for comfort. It’s also often supplied in error - sometimes knowingly by less scrupulous bulb companies.

This season there’s a bluebell survey in progress which hopes to reveal the precise distribution both of the English bluebell and also of both the Spanish bluebell and the hybrids. All the distinguishing features are nicely outlined one The-Tree's bluebell page here and also on London's Natural History Museum's bluebell pages here.

So often we think of invasive plants in terms of them physically dominating their habitats and smothering native plants; the English bluebell is suffering a more subtle threat.

Comments

[max]

It's probably small consolation that English bluebells are doing so well in California:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/badthings/448520983/in/set-72157600051973082/
(at least I think those are non-scripta, some of them are leaning anyway).

[Graham Rice]

Yes, as far as I can tell that's the English bluebell. Jepson (The Jepson Manual of the Higher Plants of California) does not mention either species so neither can have escaped into the wild.

I'm going to order some English bluebells and plant them in the garden here in PA next fall - a little hint of home.

[Oldroses]

I planted English bluebells a couple of years ago. They come up every year but have never bloomed. Do they need to achieve a certain size before blooming or do they just dislike New Jersey?

[Graham Rice]

Your English bluebells may be having trouble with the summer heat in NJ, and also in spring when temperatures sometimes rocket before the tree cover can provide much shade.