Spanish Bluebells, Scilla, or Squill
"Snug inside I sit & rhyme,
Planning, poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill."
-Robert Graves
(1895-1985)
(1895-1985)
Formerly the scientific name was Scilla hispanica, & perhaps because the common name is also Scilla or Squill, it is still quite often listed in bulb catalogs by the former genus name, even though for current nomenclature it is Hyacinthoides hispanica.
The squills arrive in our garden in this order: In February Scilla mischtschenkoana 'Tubergeniana' is in full flower, our shortest scilla but with large white flowers. Second comes a long-naturalized white scilla which grows in the deepest darkest driest shadows Hyacinthoides non-scripta'Alba,' lively by March. Soon on its heals is the regular H. non-scripta English Bluebells, liveliest in April. And last of all, but worth the wait, is H. hispanica, Spanish Bluebells, which look exactly like the English except for arriving later & being three to four times taller.
There's also a hierarchy of shade ratio. The white squill H. nonscripta 'Alba' likes the most shade; the egular blue English Bluebell likes brighter shade; & the Spanish Bluebell grows in sunnier locations. All do well in harsh areas that do not get watered.
H. non-scripta & H. hispanica hybridize willynilly. Indeed, there is probably not a pure specimen of either species in any garden anywhere in the world. Only the clumps that get to be enormous & arrive latest would I with any certainty categorize as mainly the Spanish. The specimen shown at the top of the page was photographed in May (2002) when all the White Squill & the English Bluebells have stopped blooming. The Spanish Bluebells also have thicker tougher turf, but given the tendency to hybridize with the English, we have intermediate sizes here & there.
The clump shown above was a good eighteen inches tall, compared to the earlier bluebells which are no taller than the grape hyacinths, eight or ten inches at the most, & often shorter.