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Posted by David Brear on 6/4/2008, 10:54 am, in reply to "Re: Scientific names"
81.178.107.114
According to Grigson (Englishman's Flora) ' ... it was a plant with no history and no warrant from Greece and Rome. They attempted, it is true, to make it into a hyacinth, but it was hyacinthus non-scriptus, a hyacinth _not_ inscribed with AI, AI on the petals, not the flower which sprang from the blood of Hyacinthus, carrying those letters of grief.' and 'To Gerard's entry we may owe the "azured hare-bell" in Cymbeline ...' Grigson also makes the point that no-one mentioned it much until the 19th century, when it was taken up by the Romantic poets.
I may not know much about plants but I do remember my favourite book (?) about them!
I recommend Richard Mabey's article in Flora Britannia. '65% are found in woodland, with 16% being recorded from hedgerows. Other habitats supporting bluebell are scrub (6%), grassland (8%) and tall herbs (2%)' in Birmingham and the Black Country. 'Not surprisingly, the native bluebell was most often recorded (71% of records) in broadleaved wood/scrub habitat.' and 'It thrives in shady habitats such as broadleaved woodland where it can dominate the ground flora' say Plantlife. Perhaps as farming became more efficient the woods beacame the normal place to see bluebells.
Turner mentions it in 1548 as being 'aboot Syon and Shene' - not many woods around there even then, surely? - although no doubt it might be preserved in Harrow Park - not my area, really.
Gerard (1597) knew it 'wilde in woods, Copses and the borders of fields.' In 1660 Ray recorded it in 'Madingly and Kingston woods', as you might expect. That's very different from referring a wood as a 'bluebell wood, of course. Maybe that came in with railway tourism?
David Brear
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