White English Bluebell - A short study

On a short Geocaching walk a few weeks ago I was very excited to see some white bluebells along a swath of english bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta).

I was sure it was an english bluebell, rather than a spanish or hybrid due to the long slender bell shaped flower, whose tips curl back. The spanish and hybrid bluebell flowers flare out rather than really curl back and the flower is not parallel along its' length. Rather the spanish and hybrid bluebell flowers become wider nearer the tip.

Along with this the anthers in my specimen are cream, rather than blue - a good indicator that I was looking at an english individual.


The hybrid is very common in England and it would seem that it is commonly mistaken for the spanish bluebell.  As you can see the perianth segments flare out. The petal is a mix of colours, a lilac and darker blue, but this can vary. The anthers are are bluey-cream colour, but can vary from cream to blue.

Here's a piccy of a hybrid for comparison to the english bluebell.

But then as I went in for the final test, disaster struck. As I tried to kneel down to see if there was a scent to this bluebell, the camera swung down and severed one of the flowers from the plant. A few obscenities later and I came to the decision that I wouldn't let this be for nothing. I'd take it home and investigate the flower further.

Can you spot the white flower in this see of blue and green?

Firstly I wanted to get a close photo of the flower tube and the amazing way that the tips curl back. In the lily family, of which the bluebell is a member, what we'd call petals are called perianth segments. This is because the petals and sepals are identical in colour and form (shape). So each of the tips curling back are the ends of each perianth segment.
The scent was so strong that I could smell it even taking these photos! Putting the flower to my nose unleashed an explosive fragrance that was powerful, but not overwhelming.

Here's the flower after some dissection. Here we can see the carpel, with the anthers in the middle and the perianth segments

Here we can see a perianth segment with the filament attached to the segment nearly all the way to the anther. Reading the entries for the bluebells in The Wild Flower Key (Rose and O'Reilly) we can see that this is a distinguishing feature between the species. On the outer 3 segments of the spanish species and the hybrid between the english and spanish species end the attachment lower down the filament. At the middle or lower for the hybrid and well below the middle for the spanish bluebell.

Taking the flower to the microscope, we can see that the pollen is a lovely smooth oval shape.

Here's the ovary of the bluebell, showing clearly the ovules - the eggs.

I really enjoyed going a bit deeper with my plant studies and may post more of these in future. It's amazing what you can learn by spending just a bit of time with practical hands on with plants. I really hope that you enjoyed reading this.


The Natural History Museum has a good website for identifying bluebells. To visit the page, click here.