Last updated 21:58, Wednesday, 14 May 2008

“WHERE have all the flowers gone?” sings American folk legend Joan Baez on one of my 60s albums.

Experts fear that the native bluebell is in danger of being eclipsed by its more robust Spanish cousin

She was, of course, referring, in one of her many anti-war protest songs, to the men whose lives were thrown away in war.

But she may well have been voicing the concerns of myself and other Langholm folk who have looked from car and bus windows as we passed along the A7 by the Dean Banks, searching, as we always do at this time of year for the carpets of cratties beneath the trees on the banking.

This spring we’ve looked in vain.

One reader has written to me, incensed that our wild hyacinths or bluebells or cratties, whichever name you prefer, have been buried under tons of soil at a time when this same plant is in the news as being in danger of being eclipsed by its more robust cousin the Spanish bluebell, just as our native red squirrel is being gradually wiped out by the grey.

The foreign bluebell, introduced as a garden plant 100 years ago, has been spread by cross-pollination, result- ing in a new hybrid called hyacinthoides x massartiana.

This has become more widespread over the past 20 years.

Dr Peter Hollingsworth, head of genetics and conservation at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, is conducting a study into the impact of this foreign invader to see how our native bluebell numbers have been affected.

Experts fear that the difference between the two species will become blurred and the Spanish intruder will increase in number, affecting our native species.

The Edinburgh team is working with scientists from the Natural History Museum in London to find out the scale of the problem.

One newspaper report said: “It is hoped that a genetic test can be developed to allow plant nurseries to select pure native strains for new woodland planting, thus ensuring the native variety’s survival.”

Why, then, has the company constructing the new road here at Langholm, been allowed to destroy such a large area of bluebells?

There had been discussions before the work started and it was understood that the bulbs would be lifted and replanted. I would be delighted to learn that this had been done but there’s no evidence of it having happened.

Bluebells have inspired poets and songwriters in Scotland for generations. No less a champion of the Scots language than Robert Burns himself sings its praises. In a poem plainly set in springtime he rejects the gaudier flowers of foreign fields:

“Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers

Where the blue-bell and the gowan lurk lowly unseen

For there, lightly tripping amongst the wild flowers

A-listening the linnet, aft wanders my Jean.”

Is it possible that the dust, blowing onto our cars and windows recently, can be explained by all the earth-moving along the new road?

Last time we experienced such a fall-out it was put down to dust from the Sahara.

This time I feel the source is a lot nearer home.