With Thanks to: https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/03/yes-virginia-bluebells-also-grow-in-indiana.html
My always magnificent crop of Virginia Bluebells, geographically speaking got in the plant nursery school in West Virginia to Indiana. But as is often true from the plant world, geography, history and personal preference get somewhat tangled in the journey.
Yes, even the Virginia Bluebells title came at the Colony of Virginia from their 17th century discovery, but they are actually native from New York to Alabama and west to Kansas and Minnesota — also showing up from 18 species along the way.
If it’s a specific date you need, American Father Figure and Garden Guy Thomas Jefferson composed of the Monticello bluebells in his backyard publication about April 16,1766, coverage”a brightly colored, funnel-formed blossom in the lowlands in bloom.”
That a man with a present for words will so understate the beauty of my favorite native plant is nearly criminal. Come on Tom! Where is the fire in”bluish coloured and funnel-formed?”
I, for one, desperately for the Virginia bluebells coming every spring, stomping around in the fat layer of magnolia leaves that dropped on my patch.
It’s March Magic. Winter is history. As they grow, their leaves poke through the leaf decay in dark shades of purple but turn a nice green. The”funnel-formed blossoms,” and I’ll give Thomas Jefferson his because of this, stream from a wealthy pink to the celestial shade of baby blue, although that could vary according to the dirt from whence they emerge.
That color change is the result of changes in the pH of the cell sap, though, like hydrangeas, Virginia Bluebells rise maybe 14 inches over a love-starved picture and also increased in soils that are acid will turn into a deeper shade of blue.
Moving deeper into the plant history, blossom color change that is such is rather typical from the family. And bluebells whined using pulmonaria, which offers exactly the identical flow of pink and blue.
Hello Mertensia virginica!
Here a few smiles at the next garden club meeting.
Such designations have consistently seemed arbitrary to me — and that I need in. The afternoon — I live — or maybe may have to die for some ephemeral with blossoms and also hot green leaves is termed Hilltensia hoosierca.
Given its own colors pioneers to the New World also believed Virginia bluebells to be lungwort, which had been used to deal with lung diseases. It didn’t work over here. Dead men tell no stories.
Another early blue title was”oyster foliage,” but was apparently not a hit thing from the Colonial diet. Another name was”Mountain gloomy cowslip,” about as illustrative as Jefferson’s”funnel-formed” blossoms.
How do I love thee? Allow me to count the ways.
1. My initial in-your-face encounter with Virginia bluebells proved to be a creature spot spread out with its arms raised toward the sun, a near religious experience under a gigantic pine tree. It was a religious experience.
2. The leaves and blossoms buddy with all Bloodroot, crocus and poppies, offering a palette of white, blue, purple, yellow, pink and green.
3. Their leaves show up in precisely the identical period since the NCAA basketball championship, so if your team loses you have a fantastic excuse to go outside to the garden where nobody could see you, and shed tears.
4. Yes folks get paid to research all that stuff.
5. The very same people also report Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds may also sometimes stick their noses into”funnel-formed” Virginia bluebells, an event for which I would gladly pay $10 to sit and observe a bright Spring day in April and May.
6. Leaving little mess supporting, Virginia bluebells go off by summer, dropping just four seeds (the specialists call them”nutlets”) per blossom to disperse the species. These little nutlets — politically speaking and otherwise — are ovoid and flattened on one side, their surfaces minutely wrinkled.
7. Virginia bluebells can be bought as nutlets or in bare root divisions. My naked roots came in Sunshine Farm and Gardens in West Virginia where Forever Hippie Barry Glick has hauled forth in rather distant refuge for at least 40 years.
8. Virginia bluebells are not. They can die outside in four or five years to be substituted by store-bought nutlets, their nutlets or root divisions, but no matter their entry, they consistently leave us better.
More picture credits: jellyfish, Monticello photos. Other photographs by this author.
Yes, Virginia, bluebells also grow in Indiana originally appeared on GardenRant on March 25, 2019.