Gentlemen’s breeches or old ladies’ bonnets. Wait, are we talking about old fashioned clothing on a gardening website?
Eastern bluebell, Virginia cowslip, or Roanoke bells. Phew, it is a plant. Exactly what you came to learn about, right?
Don’t worry, we’ve covered the basics of everything you could ever want or need to know about how to grow, propagate, and care for the shade loving, blue bloomed North American native also known as blue and pink ladies, smooth lungwort, or chiming bells…
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The common names go on and on, but whatever you choose to callM. virginica, it’s time to dig in!
Here’s what I’ll cover:
Cultivation and HistoryCall it what you want, the most often agreed upon common name is Virginia bluebell, and it is an eastern North American native member of the borage, Boraginaceae, family.
But just in case figuring out the best colloquial name for Mertensia virginica wasn’t confusing enough, the genus wasn’t always named Mertensia either.
Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, called it Pulmonaria after a related European genus.
Later, botanist Albrecht Roth realized it was too different to be a true Pulmonaria, and renamed it Mertensiaafter German botanist Franz Carl Mertens.
Mertensia also happens to be the genus name of a group of jellyfish, which Mertens’ son Karl Heinrich Mertens studied.
So Mertensia is both something found in the woods and plains of eastern North America, and something you can find in the ocean!
Virginia bluebell was used by the Cherokee people to treat pertussis, tuberculosis, and other respiratory ailments, giving it yet
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