Virginia bluebells are a fast-growing spring ephemeral, and the biggest one I have. The main bed is a haze of blue hanging over the green.
About a week ago, there was not a flower in sight, but the bluebell bed is very obviously spring green and spangled with a variety of cornflower blue, mauve, and bubblegum-pink-and-purple corrugated flower buds hanging from their stems. The plants were already nearly full size, even though they first appeared only about 2 ½ weeks ago.
A week and a half ago, the main bluebell bed was covered with fresh green growth that looks like bolted Brussel sprouts that had terminal clusters of little mauve flower buds.
When they first came up, they resembled Brussel sprouts. This is a plant with no tiny stage; each of the little sprouts below is the size of a good-sized Brussel sprout, each of which grew into a stem bearing terminal flowers.
The Rest of the Bluebell Story
The thing about bluebells is that they go dormant, so the best thing to do with the resulting yellowed stems—if something hasn’t popped up to hide them—is to just cut the stems at their bases. This entire bed will disappear from sight when it gets hot, mostly covered by hosta and asters.
The Missouri Botanical Garden lists Virginia bluebells as a Plant of Merit, whose native habitats are moist, rich woods and river floodplains.
With that in mind, I moved several seedlings in the spring of 2017. The robust seedlings appear in the spring, and have fat, sturdy little roots. They are easy to dig up and move, so I put several between the lady ferns that are around the redbud in my rain garden. They have overwintered well, and a few bloomed.