Thousands of bluebells planted in Worcestershire may have to be uprooted after complaints the council has planted a Spanish variety.

Clent Parish Council planted the 7,000 bulbs last year at a cost of �1,000 - but now their origin is unclear.

Experts are already warning the British bluebell will be extinct in 10 years if it is allowed to crossbreed with its Spanish cousin.

Niall Bennett, from the wild flower conservation charity Plantlife, said: "If the Spanish plant is not stopped, it will eventually overtake the British bluebell and once it is lost, it will be lost forever.

British vs Spanish

The native bluebell has intense blue blooms on one side of a blue stem. The Spanish bluebell is larger, straighter and has paler flowers on all sides. The native bluebell grows in rotting vegetation, the Spanish variety grows anywhere. Native bluebells have a delicate scent, the Spanish variety has hardly any.

"The recent introduction of the Spanish variety is very worrying.

"We would encourage everyone who buys native wild flowers to check where they come from."

Clent council chairman Margaret Sherrey said a botanist had been called in to try to verify the variety.

"We were assured in the first place that they were English.

"We went to great lengths to make sure the bluebells we bought were British and even got it in writing from the supplier that they were definitely native."

Contractor Phil Hughes, of PD Hughes Landscapes of Stourbridge, who planted the bulbs, said he had been assured the bluebells were native.

"Whatever rectifications need to be done they will be done, no problem."