British Plants and Flowers – Bluebell

Name – The various names, both English and Latin, used for the bluebell and the (unrelated) harebell, are utterly confusing – if this plant were a person you’d suspect it of identity theft!. The bluebell's alternative names include wild hyacinth, Crawtraes (meaning crow's toes), and Granfer Griggles. In 1597, John Gerard made the whole situation worse when he called it ‘Hyacinthus anglicus, which is commonly named the Blew English Hare Bells’. To add to the confusion, the bluebell that is the national flower of Scotland is not even a member of the species, but another unrelated plant with the botanical name Campanula rotundifolia but also known as a Harebell. Let’s deal with the botanical name too – Hyacinthoides non-scripta, which distinguishes it from the hyacinth proper, which has the letters ai ai written on it, but that’s a different story...

Description - The stems are anything from six to twelve inches long and bend over at the top. The lavender-blue flowers are pendulous, bell-shaped and slightly fragrant.

Origin - The bluebell has been a part of the British countryside for as long as there is any recorded history of the British Isle, and bluebell walks in native woodland have been part of poetry and romance for that long too, recorded by such notable writers as Robert Burns, John Clare and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Growing bluebells is easy, stopping them is the problem! As long as they have reasonable dampness, shelter from direct sun, and aren’t competing with other invasive plants you may very soon find you have nothing but bluebells in your borders! This is partly because they produce a toxin that the plant uses to fight off potential pests such as nematodes and slugs that would otherwise eat the bulbs, research is taking place to try and extract this commercially to use as a natural pesticide. In fact, nothing will eat bluebells because of their toxicity, which is why you find them growing in great lakes in woods where all other undergrowth has been grazed off by deer or even cattle and sheep. Bluebells were said by herbalists to help prevent nightmares, and used as a remedy against leprosy, spider-bites and tuberculosis, but the today we know the bluebell is poisonous and shouldn’t’ be eaten.

For Decoration - It is also considered an unlucky flower to pick or bring into the house.

British plant bluebell photograph by D H Wright, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

bluebell, comfrey, flax, foxglove, hawthorn, heartsease, heather, herb robert, holly, hollyhock, honeysuckle, hop, hornbeam, jacobs ladder, larkspur, oak, periwinkle, rowan, silver birch, snowdrop, tansy, vipers bugloss, wild strawberry, willow, yarrow

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