Month: January 2009

Many years ago I bought a pocket sized copy of Collins Gem Guide to Garden Flowers and I have found it very helpful in identifying plants.   A few years ago I found two seedlings growing in my garden, which I hadn’t put there. They had large green glossy leaves but without flowers I was unable to put a name on them.   Anyway I moved them to a better part of the garden close to the path so that I could keep an eye on them.

They flowered around Christmas time and looking up my Collins Gem Guide I discovered that they were Hellebores.   One had white flowers and the other had pale plum coloured flowers.   At first I thought the white-flowered one was the Christmas Rose H. niger and the plum coloured one the Lenten Rose H. orientalis x H. atrorubens.

However, in the Collins Gem Guide it said that the Christmas Rose "was a much sought after plant, though not always the easiest to grow and greatly resented disturbance of any kind".   It also had "white saucer flowers of great beauty and hated dry soils".  The "Lenten Rose had relatively small flowers which occurred in an exciting range of colours from white to greenish and pink to deepest plum-purple" and "formed taller more substantial clumps".   They all thrive in rich deep soils.

On examining my plants I found that the flowers on both of them were of a similar size as were the clumps they formed so they must be versions of the Lenten Rose. The flowers seeded in early 2008 and I collected the seeds and scattered them around the garden.   This year I have a good collection of plants, which I hope will flower this coming December in perhaps more varied shades.

The two photos in my Photo Album show the two clumps of Lenten Roses taken from different angles. The second photo shows some of the plum coloured flowers. Both clumps are still in flower now but some of the flowers are going to seed.