We recently went to visit the Engineer’s godmother on her family farm. We had a lovely walk up to a little wood where there are beautiful bluebells growing wild. She tells me that there are two types of bluebell that grow in the UK – wild English bluebells that are protected and special and Spanish incomer bluebells that are driving the genuine article out. A bit like grey squirrels, I guess.
Since we have bluebells in our Vicarage garden I then wanted to work out which ones we have. Since not all are blue (we also have whitebells and lilacbells) I suspect they are the Spanish variety. What do you think?
The Vicar's Wife 
You’re more likely to find English bluebells in woods. Also all the flowers of the English are on the same side of the stalk – hence they have a curve. From the photo I’d say yours were Spanish – but still very pretty!
English bluebells also have slender stems while the Spanish are quite thick … I can’t really tell from the photo.
What is it about Vicarage gardens? Ours is over-run with bluebells and we can’t see to eradicate them however hard we try!
Hi Tim & LB: I went out this afternoon and had another good look after comments here and on Twitter. I think I might have a sort of mix, but will take more pics again tomorrow. Some look very Spanish, but others are bendy and look more English. A multi-cultural bluebell gathering to reflect the mixed neighbourhood we live in, perhaps?
Do the spanish ones have droopy moustaches? I find that is quite an easy way to tell. The English ones will be equipped with furled brolly and a bowler hat – and maybe just a pencil moustache. They will almost certainly say “ding dong” in a Leslie Phillips accent.
This week I have spent a lot of time walking up and down our road and a couple of neighbouring ones, delivering Christian Aid envelopes and (trying) to collect them. And after reading this I started looking at bluebells in a whole new light – I had never realised there were two sorts, and I had never realised there were so many down our street in WV11. So thanks for the post, which made the door-to-door collection much more interesting (as did the monkey – yes, a real live one – but that’s another story…)
Hi Rector’s Wife. Hope the monkey donated lots! I wouldn’t have taken WV11 for a neighbourhood of zookeepers… If you’d like to tell the story, let me know!
Happy to tell it – and I have a suggestion to make to you about the vicar’s wife’s dilemma. Any chance you could drop me an email so I could email you direct rather than via a public blog?!
Hi RW. Email in the post! Thanks.