Interlopers

The bluebells are now fully out. We have watched that spring tide come up and across the country as friends and family report of their woods taking on the familiar azure haze, but at a height of approx 200m on the Herefordshire Plateau and not too far from the Welsh borders we are chillier here. Nothing that two weeks of unbroken sunshine could not unlock though - from a few buds coming up, to walking back in last week and seeing the flowers stretch the length of the path, the unmistakeable scent of spring is now filling the air.

And that in itself is a very positive sign: scent means native plants, and that in turn means the majority of our existing established plants are the British hyacinthoides non-scripta. The Spanish interlopers (hyacinthoides hispanica) are not fragrant, and their flowers encircle the stem, unlike our very British habit of drooping to one side (no national slur intended). As with so many plant identification issues, it is however not that straightforward, as there is in addition the very pretty but equally unwelcome hybrid bluebell, hyacinthoides x massartiana. The hybrid, full of mongrel vigour, and the Spaniard, quick to escape from domestic plantings, both represent additional threats to this loveliest of native plants, one of our key indicator species of ancient woodlands, and already suffering from habitat destruction, illegal wild bulb collection and trading, and damage from excessive footfall in poorly managed wooded areas.

And here they are, interloping away in our wood. From its heyday as part of a model farm in Victorian times, the wood then became a large playground for the holiday-makers who visited here, and pathways lined with narcissi, cultivated daffodils, allium nectaroscordum (honey garlic) and vinca bear witness to its domestication. Clumps of upright blue, pink and white bluebells dot the open areas too. These scripta are easy to identify, but their hybrid cousins less so, with qualified negatives such as “less droop” and “less scent” apparently the best available advice by way of description. Not terribly helpful when faced with expanses of blue. I take the scent as the most unmistakeable identifier, and on that basis some 70% of the current flowers are natives. Eventually we do need to uproot the interlopers to prevent them taking over the non-scripta, but for now I settle on taking them out of the flowery gene pool by picking a large bunch for the house.

We will continue planting more and more native bulbs each autumn. The bluebell is so deeply rooted in British folklore: sad to think it now has to have legal protection and be supported by efforts like ours to re-boost its numbers. Alternative names illustrate its position in fairy tales - cuckoo’s boots, witches’ thimbles, fairy flower, lady’s nightcap - and bluebell woods were long held to be threaded with fairy enchantments. I thank the #WoodlandTrust for revealing also that bluebell sap was once used as glue to bind books, and that the Elizabethans crushed the bulbs to make starch for their ruffs. No ruffs at Oaklands, but some gratitude for the plant’s toxicity, thereby sparing them the ravages of our numerous grey squirrels. Wild garlic (allium ursinum) and our native woodland arum lily known as lords and ladies (arum maculatum) are also starting to colonise the cleared areas, and also helping bring more pollinators and more butterflies.

Neil has written in earlier posts about our mission to plant huge quantities of the native English bluebell in the spaces liberated from the evil laurel, and we were delighted to see that those bulbs are now also flowering, those on the eastern (field) side of “Indonesia” a good week before the more shaded side. Beautiful, but tough too: far from the verdant, dewy glades of picture postcards, these ‘bells have come up the hard way, in the driest of soils, criss crossed by laurel roots, and without even the benefit of any leaf litter. Long may they prosper and multiply.