Bluebells
Bluebell displays are one of the wild highlights of the spring season. The delicate flowers grow in dense carpets of blue in woodlands across the UK. The British Isles are an important stronghold for this species, with almost half the global population found here.
As well as being a spectacular sight for nature lovers, the humble bluebell plays an important role for pollinating insects. Flowering from late April, the bluebell provides a vital early nectar source for a variety of insects including peacock, orange-tip and brimstone butterflies and many bumblebees. Bluebells flower before the leaves on trees have fully opened, putting their energy into growth early in the year to make the most of the sun streaming through the lean woodland canopy. Bluebells are chiefly pollinated by bumblebees, and you’ll often hear their steady, productive drone as you wander through a bluebell wood. Sometimes however, the bees don’t play fair, and are known to occasionally bite a tiny hole into the bottom of the 24
bell to extract the flower’s sweet nectar. When this happens, the bee fails to come into contact with the pollen so won’t do its usual pollination job when it visits another flower.
As well as reproducing sexually, by producing seed, bluebells will also sometimes reproduce asexually by natural vegetative propagation, that is, by producing bulbs. Because of its methods of reproduction, bluebells spread very slowly, and for this reason the flower is often used as an ‘Ancient Woodland Indicator’. What this means is that their presence is used to help conservationists identify what is an ancient woodland habitat. The seeds of the bluebell are large and heavy, falling and growing directly adjacent to the parent plant, so a dense carpet takes a very long time to establish. For a large carpet of bluebells to become established, a woodland habitat must have been present for many years. Ancient woodland habitats are valuable because they support a whole host of different species as
