Human Flower Project

Pure Bluebells

England’s beloved native is hybridizing with an Iberian relative. Is this cause for ecological alarm or human racism in disguise?

Bluebells at Everdon Stubbs, 2006
Photo: Graham Jeffery

“It has been a rather wet spring this year and the bluebells are flowering a little later than is normal. In my area they are just now reaching peak condition.” So, kindly, writes correspondent and photographer Graham Jeffery, from Northamptonshire, England.

It was on Graham’s gorgeous website Sensitive Light that, all out of season last August, we first “strolled” through bluebell woods. Shades of Hopkins’ “May Magnificat” wherein

azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes.

Living in a bluebell-less land, we remembered Graham’s photographs after encountering this controversy over bluebell purity. It appears that the native English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) has been commingling with Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and produced a hybrid species that, some say, threatens to crowd out England’s favorite wildflower.

Though the Spanish bluebell came to the British Isles more than 300 years ago, some in England have begun voicing alarm just recently. This ardent partisan declares, “The Spanish variety has blue bell-shaped flowers, but that’s where the similarity ends. Our native bluebells have a delicate scent, while the Spanish variety has hardly any. Our native bluebells have rich blue coloured blooms on just one side of a blue stem, while the Spanish bluebell is larger and straighter with pale coloured flowers on all sides.” Belying fears of miscegenation, the same author writes, “The Spanish variety will grow almost anywhere, and many of them have got into the British countryside where they are breeding with our own native species and producing a hybrid.”

In a more temperate spirit, Deborah Kohn of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Banchory, Scotland, has been studying the spread and effects of bluebell hybrids to see if, in fact, the native flower is threatened. Her computer simulation showed that “unless species differentiated by habitat, hybridization would proceed until one or the other parental species was completely absorbed.” That does sound serious.

The Spanish bluebell, spread by nursery sales, then escaped gardens and cross-pollinated with the English wildflower. Now the hybrid is actually crowding out both non-scripta AND hispanica. This site offers a graphic comparison of all three. Check it out if you’re lucky enough to be in bluebell country and like naming what you see.

(And indulge us as we ring a few more bluebells, this one from Italy and our stateside beauty—unrelated to the others—Mertensia virginica, better known as Virginia bluebells.)

Of late, the general concern over invasive plants has grown pretty feverish in the U.S. Horticulturist and commercial seedsman George Ball, writing for the New York Times, poo-pooed the issue, calling the purists “botanical xenophobes” guilty of “narrowmindedness.” Ecologists like Jennifer Forman Orth were none too pleased with that portrayal, and have swung back.

In her excellent Invasive Species Weblog, Orth wrote that Ball “makes reference to three well-established invaders in the U.S. having been accidental introductions: kudzu (Pueraria lobata), starthistle (Centaurea), and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). While all three species had multiple vectors of introduction, both accidental and intentional, the main pathways of kudzu and purple loosestrife were certainly intentional. It would be nice if gardeners could absolve themselves of all responsibility for plant invasions, but we cannot.” Certainly gardeners have played a major role in England’s Hyacinthoides drama.

The genie’s out of the bottle, the bluebells have intermarried, and Adam and Eve are looking for bargains on the latest fig-leaves at Target.

Is the hybridizing of English bluebells a true cause for concern? We don’t know. It’s got to be good that Kohn and others are investigating—rather than either ignoring or castigating.

Bluebell woods at Everdon Stubbs
Photo: Graham Jeffery

And it’s definitely good that Graham Jeffery continues to visit Coton Manor and Everdon Stubbs each spring with his camera and sensitive eye.

“I think of us having 3 types of bluebell, the native, the Spanish, and the hybrid,” he writes. “The problem described in the Guardian article is not new. Spanish bluebells were first introduced in the 1680’s when they were preferred to the native species. I am sure the concern of the conservationists is well founded, but at this late stage (300 years on) I can’t see any realistic solution to the problem of hybridization. It would be a pity to lose the native variety, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.”

Please keep watch, Graham. And many thanks to you.

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