After the daisy, buttercup and primrose, few wild flowers are better known than the Blue-bell or Wild Hyacinth. In the very earliest days of spring its leaves break through the earth and lay in rosette fashion close to the surface, leaving a circular tube through which the spike of pale unopened buds soon arises. A few premature individuals may be seen in full flower at quite an early date; but it is not until spring is fully and fairly with us that we can look through the woods under the trees and see millions of them swaying like a blue mist; or, as Tennyson has finely and truly worded it, “that seem the heavens upbreaking through the earth.” This must not be confounded with the Blue-bell of Scotland, which is Campanula rotundifolia (see page 78). If we dig up an entire specimen we shall find that, like the hyacinth of the florist, its foundation is a roundish bulb, in this case somewhat less than an inch in diameter at its stoutest part. The leaves have parallel sides, or, as the botanist would say, they are linear; and before the plant has done flowering they have reached the length of a foot or more, whilst the flower-stalk is nearly as long again. Before the flowers open the buds are all erect, but these gradually assume a drooping attitude; though when the seeds are ripening the capsule again becomes erect. The flower is an elongated bell, showing no distinction between calyx and corolla; it is therefore called a perianth. It consists of six floral leaves, joined together at their bases, the free portions curling back and disclosing the six yellow The Genus Scilla belongs to the Natural Order LiliaceÆ; its name is classical, and probably derived from the Greek Skyllo, to annoy, in allusion to the bulbs being poisonous. There are two other native species:— The Vernal Squill (S. vernalis). Flower-scapes, one or two, not so long as leaves. Like S. nutans, it has a couple of long bracts at the base of the pedicels, as the short stalks are called, which connect the flowers with the tall scape. This is a rare plant, occurring only in rocky pastures near the west coast from Flint to Devon; also Ayr and Berwick to Shetland, and in the E. and N. E. of Ireland. April and May. The Autumnal Squill (S. autumnalis) throws up several flower-scapes before the leaves. Flowers, reddish-purple, not drooping, but spreading or erect; July to September in dry pastures from Gloucester to Cornwall, from Middlesex to Kent. No bracts. |