May 2, 2010 - Virginia Bluebells

Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

There is a blue haze in the streamside forest. It stretches along the creek from forest edge to forest edge. It’s as though bits of the sky rained down to earth. Wildflowers, coaxed from their winter slumber by spring rains and warming temperatures, put on this magnificent show. They are Virginia bluebells, a perennial native wildflower that grows in wet woodlands, particularly in forested floodplains. Bluebells stand 1 to 2 feet tall, sporting oval-shaped greenish leaves and pale blue flowers. Each flower flares from a tube into a trumpet shape. These colonial plants grow in spreading clusters. The pastel bluebells provide a soft, soothing backdrop for the creekside forest in a spectacular, but ephemeral spring show.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.