Spanish bluebell
Hyacinthoides hispanica
Family · Asparagaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The blue bells that fill the floor of oak woods and olive groves in April, with open bells facing every direction and blue anthers. It is the Iberian version of the English bluebell carpet.
Oak woods · Scrubland · Fields and pasture · Uplands
Also known asSpanish bluebell, wood hyacinth
How to tell it
Several broad strap-shaped basal leaves. An upright stem with a raceme of eight to twenty pale blue bells, open and set all round the axis rather than all facing one way. The flower segments turn out only at the tip, and the anthers are blue. It grows from a white bulb.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. The bulb contains cardioactive glycosides and the sap irritates skin. It is widely planted in northern European gardens, where it hybridises with the English bluebell and is considered invasive, which is unusual for an Iberian plant.