Bluebells

The bells are ringing, and you won’t hear a sound, but the fragrance will be there to enjoy, and the colour, well the colour. Blue of course, bluebells. I’m waxing nostalgic here thinking of the ancient woodlands of England where I grew up. In spring they’re awash with the much-loved, nodding heads of the bluebell that rise above the floppy, strap-like foliage. They’re an incredible wildflower spectacle, millions of them carpeting the woods with a violet glow. As children we’d always visit the woods to pick a few to display and enjoy the fragrance at home. The fragrance is redolent of hyacinths but not as strong.

I should really call it the British bluebell rather than English as they grow elsewhere in the British Isles, including Scotland where there’s another plant called bluebell, but that one doesn’t flower until summer. Known as the harebell in England, Campanula rotundifolia is called the bluebell of Scotland. It’s also a pretty plant with bell-shaped flowers that are a paler violet-blue.

The botanical name of the English bluebell is Hyacinthoides non-scripta,
which sounds like something you’d pick up at the pharmacy. Hyacinthoides is from Prince Hyacinthus of Greek myth. Non-scripta means unlettered to distinguish the bluebell from the similar-looking hyacinth. It’s often been called wild hyacinth as it does have the same strap-like foliage and it also grows from a bulb. Each one produces a single stem that droops with the nodding, bell-shaped fragrant flowers.

It is native to western Europe but grows especially well in the UK where cooler conditions are most suitable. It’s a protected species there, and yet it is under threat, not from the usual suspect — loss of habitat, which it is, but from a family member, the Spanish bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica). The Spanish bluebell is similar in appearance except the stems are more upright with flowers all around the stem, rather than drooping from one side like the English bluebell, and unlike the English, the flowers of the Spanish bluebell have no fragrance.

A more vigorous plant, it was introduced into the UK by the Victorians as a garden plant, only to escape into the wild and crossbreed with the native species, resulting in a hybrid, potentially out-competing the native.

Lovely as they are, both the Spanish and British bluebells species can become, if not invasive, aggressive in areas where they’ve been introduced. Because of a similar climate on the west coast, they spread easily in Vancouver gardens, and even here in Ontario it has been noted as potentially invasive.

They grow well enough in Ontario gardens hardy to zone five, and I have had a well-behaved clump in my garden that hasn’t budged from where I planted it. Still, it is important to keep an eye on non-native plants.

However, we have no need of those other bluebells because we have our own unrelated native one, Mertensia virginica. The common name is Virginia bluebells, a member of the borage family. It grows in rich, moist woodland from Georgia in the southern US and north to Quebec, here in Ontario, and in my garden.

It is listed as an edible plant, including the flowers, and it has many uses in traditional medicine of Indigenous peoples, including tuberculosis treatment, as a remedy for whooping cough, and even as an antidote for treating poison. If under the weather, it would have been given as a tonic made from this plant.

They might have their own bluebells in the UK, but they also like our Virginia bluebells enough that they’re a popular garden plant there. The Royal Horticultural Society has even given Mertensia virginica the Award of Garden Merit.

Blue, blue my world is blue . . .