New plants for me! The markings are perfect for this beauty!

Lovely raised rufflied collar. Hopefully, when the sun is out, I can cross pollinate some of my hellebores! A lot of fun!

Variety is good, but sometimes you just don't like certain bloom forms. I do love the spots on your most recent post.

I have one that I think I love, it's white with a lavender picotee edging. Or I think I do...it opened somewhat last year before being blasted and destroyed by my very late very cold spell in March. I'd never seen it bloom before..so I only think it was that color, based on not fully open and possibly not fully colored. It was a seedling from someone else, so totally unknown.

Wish you had memorised it digitally. dbarron! I really like those with an exaggerated ruffled collar!

A white hellebore with pointy petals - an Anemone. Yesterday, I cross-pollinated a black double with a single one.

Here's a new double!

Some lemonade or zesty anemone

Behind is a yellow galanthus!

Sunshine makes such a lot of difference to most flowers! Same daffs - the one kissed by sunshine or to put it this way, exposed to more light, (literally no sunshine these two days!) opens more than the one in the shade, just 60 feet apart!

With the lack of sunshine, I had to pry open my Ceres to get a decent shot

Have to say, this is a PERFECTLY blotched beauty! The blotches are striking and neat! More of this please!

It has been spitting the whole day!

A yellow Harvington

Helleborus SP ANJA OUDOLF®

And I thought I had lost this one! Nice surprise!

Hellebore Stained Glass

Share yours!

Today's Joy - a Tutu!

Lily

Ceres with perfect blotches

This one with perfect freckles

Hellebore with a red basal collar!

I might be able to make a photo post tomorrow (or soon)...temps are due to be 71 for the high and the flowering is very close.

Nice surprise in the allotment

To the purists, this is not perfect!

That is a subtle coloration. I jumped the gun on one of mine...but it'll just become a bit more white, so I'm posting anyway. It's a random unselected seedling (dug sight unknown from someone's garden).

The first is Frostkiss 'Charmer'

Nice different ones to mine, dbarron! How do you overwinter them?

You know - If I buy all the different hellebores that I have seen, I will have no money left. Hellebores are so varied and different. Amazing how big a configuration there can be. Lordy, I bought another one yesterday. Incorrigible! I don't buy clothes, just food and plants.

Err me too (clothes are something I buy once a year or every two years), plants every year...food every week :)

I don't do anything, my climate is generally fine for year round. Of course last year, there was no winter (as has become the norm more than the exception), then in March, we dropped to 3 F twice. I had never seen daffodils foliage killed before in my life, and almost everything else that starts early.

Where the seedling above came from, a sister in-law of my aunt has a whole hillside of hellebores, literally thousands, maybe hundred of thousands of reseeding hellebores on a slope.

Forgot to say, bought camera too. Nightmare. So many things to fiddle and the darn thing is so heavy. Of course, I can take close up of my flowers. Might need to fork out more money to get another lens.

Weather can be so cruel. We had had no rain at all last summer and then after that it was raining more or less very regularly. I have lived here 24 years. This year is the only one when my garden really has had a proper soak. You would like there was anti-freeze in daffs. Of course, they have - in the bulbs, not the foliage.

T

Trouble with hellebores is that they self seed like mad and they have enormous roots. When you remove a plant, you will end up with a big clump in your hand and a huge hole in the ground. I like to fiddle with hand pollination. Fun!

This is today's sweet surprise.

This one is perfect, Lovely veins and the corolla (?) or the collar (don't really know the word) is raised, so much more exquisite than this one.

You know...even if I don't like one individually...in a mixed setting it would be fabulous :)

Probably way more than you want to know but that 'collar' or 'corolla' is actually called a nectary (or collectively nectaries) and are modified tubular petals filled with nectar intended to attract pollinators. They can be very prominent or large or rather small and nondescript, depending on the seedling and in a range of colors as well. Once the flower has been fertilized, they disappear. What persists for a long time are the sepals or the colored and speckled or veined portion of the flower.......what most of us refer to as the petals, although incorrectly :-)

Not all species or hybrids will have nectaries or obvious ones. They seem to be most apparent with the xhybridus types and are one of the features breeders select for with color and size/showiness.

Already knew it, but thanks GG.

The information was provided for MYAL's benefit as the descriptors of 'collar' or 'corolla' indicated some confusion about the plant parts.

Yes, I was the confused one! Do you grow hellebores, gardengal?

She does, not sure to what quantity.

I have grown hellebores for many years....pretty much all my adult life as a gardener :-) I had many different species and hybrids in my old garden, which was large, but my current garden is tiny so only have a handful now.....maybe 8 or so. A few xhybridus, several other interspecific hybrids and a couple of species.

I am also a garden educator and speaker and have given many presentations on hellebores over the years. They still remain a very popular topic for the garden clubs, nurseries and garden associations that call on me. Once upon a time I had some specific plant passions - clematis, hardy euphorbias, Japanese maples and hellebores among them - and so I researched and studied these plants extensively and planted them with abandon. Still do to some extent but space is limited and age has caught up to the mad planting bug!!

Whoa! That sounds like some impressive résumé! I can never be an academic. I rely heavily on my intuition. I like Japanese Maples too. One year, I had about 40 newly stratified sprouting Japanese maple seedlings and I planted them in a warm environment ie. living room. Before long, white stuff like fungal matters and compost gnats made their presence known and killed my seedlings. Turned out to be a batch of old compost. Compensated £25 but my seedlings (100 days' work) were no more. I also love clematis - my garden is full of carcasses .. I still have some - Armandii, Vivien Pennell, Margaret Hunt, Arabellas, Josephine, Jackmanii. I mourned my Princess Kate most! Really love its flower shape!

Today's offering

A Harvington Pink patched!

gumneck 7A Virginia : Love the first purplish one. Wonder if you can upload another take on that plant. So different.

It looks very very different than the first photo.

These 2 look similar but the bottom has got frilly petals, but the petals are both edged with white.

Harvington Smokey Blue. I still haven't seen any black single.

Harvinton Pink blotched. With Ciara, the monstrous storm yesterday, quite a few branches are broken.

For whatever reason, I have never been overly fond of the double flower forms of xhybridus. But the first two in this last photo series - with the white edging - I find very appealing. And I am also not wild about pink (yeah, I know - very picky!!) but those have a very rich coloring to them....almost a maroon.....that I also like.

All in all, your hellebores are lovely, MYAL :-) And you sure have a nice big selection!!

Yes, I agree! You have a lovely collection of hellebores, MYAL and gumneck! I particularly like the grouping posted on Jan.29. Love the blotches, the stippling, and the veined - all three are beautiful! Gumdrop, I like your first and third ones the best. Very beautiful doubles. Mine are just starting to open. Will take some pics soon as the weather allows. It is a wet week here.

Gardengal and Karen: I'm 63 and a foot in the grave! My parents both died young and so I just make sure that I have enough money to live on and then INDULGE in my pursuit of perfect collections of this and that. Glad that Spring is finally here for you, Karen! We have been wet and stormy, all thanks to storm Ciara - worst storm of the decade, so they said.

I hope gumneck is going to take more photos of the first double - plummy colour is now my new like!

I will plan to get more photos of the first purplish flower this weekend or sooner. It’s been raining the past couple of days here.

gumneck: Thank you and I await in great expectation.

As for clumping hellebores overwhelming others: I have found that that hellebores benefit from removal of old leaves right after flowering. Some experts suggest removal of seeds as hellebore seeds deteriorate in quality i.e. might not be so photogenic as the parent flower. However, there also could be the odd chance that there might be a photogenic offspring, considering the various configurations of details - nectaries, shapes of petals, veined, blotches, freckles, dashes, shades on the back and coloured edges of petals.

Since last year, I have discovered that my hellebores suffer from black spots. I have been culling quite a few wishy washy hellebores as I just don't have enough land to house every single seedling and they self seed like mad here. They are quickly becoming a thug!

Very annoyed. Took a pic of an Apricot double hellebores and then removed the flower as it suffered from Black spot, only to find the camera failed to keep the photo. The camera has been temperamental

A very plain picotee

This one really tugs at my heart's string!

Very nice! I like both! The green one will be great for St. Patrick's Day. I also have a green one but its color is in the shade of a leafy green so it does not shine like yours. I wish I have your problem of hellebore self seeding. Not a seedling in the last 5 years! I must have very sterile hellebores!

This is new, but it looks a bit confused. Supposed to be yellow!

A new one

It's rather big and the detailings are perfect!

Thought it was yellow when I bought it. The label says cream! Quite neat as a flower!

What's the name of that double green variety? Sure is a beauty.

Just Double Green or Green Double as naming them according to their markings, colour is just impossible. Some are exactly the same but much bigger, which in itself is a delight!

I miss this one so much. Had it about 5 years ago, must have killed it with too much digging and replanting. Very zen or lotus like!

One from the allotment, similar to the one with beautiful nectary, but this one has some freckles on the petals.

This is not maroon. In fact, it's just like black. Could be the black or smokey blue!

Out of nowhere comes this confused hellebore - some form of picotee

No, I don't think I have seen this one before!

Homemade videos

https://youtu.be/S4qbs4bdGFg

https://youtu.be/XCpeuUCTeYo

My newly bought hellebores

A maroon double which I had chopped for division already. Got about 3 to 4 plants out of it.

A lighter edged orientalis double

A darker edged orientalis

Speckled white Tutu with a beautiful nectary!

Anja Oudolf which came with black spots. All looks healthy now.

You have a beautiful and wonderfully diverse collection of hellebores, MYAL! I enjoy your videos very much! THank you for sharing them. When do you divide your hellebores? Do you divide them before they grow and bloom in the winter or do you divide them after they bloom?

So much beauty for one thread. Thanks to all for sharing.