The bluebells broke dormancy without attracting my attention this year—I was probably grading papers—but they were noticeable by the last week of March.
In less than a week, they were showing flower buds.
They must be responding to soil warmth, as their first appearance each year varies from the later half of March to the first week of April.
They are very interesting plants. The color of the foliage shifts rapidly from the day they pop out of the ground looking like little purple cabbages, until they reach their grassy green blooming stage. The flower buds start out very pink and go through a purplish stage before the newly opened flowers beam blueness, especially towards dusk.
Is That Color Real?
As the flowers age, the color shifts; the color in these photographs is quite close to what I saw in the garden.
Blue tends to be a difficult color for CCDs to capture accurately, but CCDs have improved a great deal over the last couple of decades. What is a CCD? It’s a charge-coupled device that captures light and turns it into digital data—it’s digital film (See TechTerms’ definition).
What About the Bees?
Bumblebees love bluebells, and hang on to the skirts made by the fused petals to get at the nectar and pollen. A honeybee’s experience may be quite different, however. The day I took these photographs, there was a honeybee doing her best to get a grip. She would land in a flower that was poking more outwards than down, the flower would immediately dip, and the honeybee would tumble out—she was a little too small to get a good grip on the flower. After two or three tries, she flew off.
What About Habitat?
The bluebells are happy under the enormous silver maple overhanging my yard (and two others) despite their reputation as inhabitants of moist woodlands and riparian floodplains. Silver maples also have a reputation—their shallow roots call dibs on most of the water around them—but the bluebells are spreading nicely anyway, and form a blue haze that’s attention-getting from the street.
I have also established a patch in the rain garden, and put some in the shadier areas near the neighbor’s driveway.
How Do You Propagate Bluebells?
Here is the laziest method ever: when you cut down the yellowing plants, scatter them in the area where you want them to come up. This will work with any plant that doesn’t actively fling its seeds around.
Or… you could let them seed in right where they are, and move the seedlings the following year. The seedlings have two more-or-less vertical spoon-shaped leaves and a fat little root, much like that of a bleeding heart, so the young plants are easy to dig up and move, preferably near the end of the bloom period of their parents. If you wait too long, you won’t be able to find them. You just have to have faith that they will survive their dormancy and come up next year—they will go dormant quickly.