I don’t know if anyone else has wondered or thought this but some people might think one way of helping Our native Bluebells is planting them in there gardens rather than picking them out in the wild cause there protected it’s advised to avoid planting non native bluebells so some might plant native ones instead but the only thing about that is that first it will be hard to find any bulb or seeds for the native ones compared to non native ones and second more importantly
Wouldn’t planting our native Bluebells in an area our non natives our common which is local area gardens and pretty much anywhere would only encourage more hybridisation cause of non native bluebells
The best thing to do about bluebells is to avoid planting non native ones close to natural ones especially in the countryside.
They form hybrid seeds very easily making it difficult to get clean seed.
You would have to dead head all non native plants within bee flight range.
It is possible to buy native bluebell bulbs, I have seen them being grown on a field scale in Norfolk to produce the bulbs although not sure where they were being sold.
If there was a way to tell native Bluebells bulbs and non native or hybrid bluebell bulbs apart it would make it easyer to pick the right one instead of the species that people are encouraged not to plant in there garden
Thanks for the link. what I mean is the actual bulbs It would be good if there was a way of telling weather the it’s a native bulb or not so that people can avoid planting non native and hybrid bluebells without knowing when people do get bluebell bulbs
If they were native Bluebell bulbs wouldn’t they of turned out to be native rather than non native or did you just mean a native bulb was planted that wasn’t bluebell so you do need to be careful cause it could still turn out to be a non native or hybrid instead?
I’m assuming that the unscrupulous (or ignorant) seller sold them as native, when they almost certainly were hybrids.
It’s not the first time we’ve been caught out. I bought Basil seeds (we use it a lot), which germinated well, but grew into plants that were definitely Lamiaceae (I still think of them as Labiatae), but had no fragrance of any kind.
Maybe the seller got the native and non native ones mixed up and thought it was native so sold them as that and the seller could of thought a Bluebell is just a Bluebell and wasn’t aware we also have non natives and hybrids and thought it must be the Bluebell no doubt about it and then sold it. Also some people arnt aware of differances or just arnt very interested in the difference between different species and the way some people see it could be a blue bell is a Bluebell and dandelion is a dandelion a buttercup is a buttercup of course people like us know just cause a plant is a Bluebell for example doesn’t mean that there’s only one species of Bluebell same for other wildflowers and not just wildflowers either different species. If there was only 1 species that make up a family in each family of wildflowers or even other wildlife nature would be less diverse and not as interesting as cause there wouldn’t be much diversity in nature but I don’t know how much the owner knows so don’t know if he just assumed it was a native or decided to sell it as a native regardless knowing its not native or just didn’t know
