UP THE GARDEN PATH

 UP THE GARDEN PATH

Louise Tomlin takes a look at some topical treats, the winter flowering Christmas rose, or Hellebore.

I may well have mentioned previously that I’m not a fan of winter at all, but as the years go by I’ve got much better at developing coping strategies to help me get through the worst of the winter blues. One of these is being on the lookout for beautiful things in nature that remind me that the seasons come and go, and that spring and all its hopefulness is just around the corner. Another is noticing something cheery and uplifting, which even in the deepest winter months, is valiantly putting on a show, by providing winter interest and colourful flowers, whilst not paying any attention to the frost and icy conditions.

An example of the latter, happened last winter when I spotted the hellebores that were flowering in one our local parks. What a welcome and cheerful sight they were. I’d not really noticed before how many different colours and shades there were, or how well those colours contrasted with the dark evergreen foliage, but what also struck me was how exquisite and extraordinary their flowers are. Out came the camera, I was determined to capture them in the low winter sunlight and also to find out more about them. Lurking at the back of my mind was the phrase ‘Christmas rose’, I’m pretty sure I might have heard them called that. So find out more I did, and as it’s that time of the year, I thought I’d be topical for once and share with you a bit of what I found out about them and also some of the photos I took that day.

Hellebore Barnhaven double white green

The first thing I saw was that they are indeed referred to as Christmas rose, as well as winter and Lenten rose, however the Hellebore, is not even remotely related to the rose or Rosacea family at all. It’s most likely been given that soubriquet simply because it’s a pretty flower that flowers at that time of the year. It is the Hellebore niger that has been called the Christmas rose, it is pure white, developing soft pink tinges as it ages. These are often the houseplants, bought during the festive season. However it is the Hellebore orientalis and its hybrids that are the most colorful of this family. They range from almost black, slatey-grey, deep plum, purple, maroon, rich red, and then lighter shades of pink, pale yellow and green, up to white. There’re a huge variation of shades available, they often aren’t pure, but can be combinations of these colours, sometimes with green on the outer sides of the sepals and rich red or pink on the inner sides. Some of them also have quite strange veinlike markings, you can see these if you look closely at the dark red one I photographed, which I think is called ‘Hello Red’. The veins are even more apparent when the light is behind a flower, which looks almost translucent. Some have attractive sprinkles of dots or dashes near the centre of the flowers.

Hellebore Hello Red

They come with single, semidouble, double and anemonecentred flowers.The single as you’d expect is the simplest, with five petals, which are in fact sepals but look like petals around a centre of cup shaped small petals called nectaries, so called because they hold nectar, this is what makes them a valuable food source for insects in the colder months. Extra layers of sepals have been added through breeding, adding one or two rows for semi-doubles, and even more for doubles, which gives them quite a frilly appearance, shown in the photo of the double white green Barnhaven Hellebore-hybrid. This maybe a bit too fussy for my taste, but each to their own, as they say. Talking of taste, here’s one that may well appeal to those of us who have a liking for the unusual, Hellebore argutifolius. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s strangely striking, with clusters of lime green, cup shaped flowers. It can reach about 1m in height and has spiny edged leaves, giving it the name holly leaf hellebore.

I’ll follow that spiky character with one that I definitely think is pretty. This sweet pale pink one has such delicately coloured flowers, that are more upright which allows sunlight to shine through their petals and leaves on a sunny day in winter, which I hope I caught in the photo. It lifted my spirits, I think it’s has a suitably showy and rather romantic name, Hellebore Honeymoon Paris in Pink.

Well there’s my selection to whet your appetites for some winter flowering beauties. A word of warning however, if we’re talking of appetites, don’t ingest them, they can be toxic, and can even cause problems with your skin, so gloves should be worn when handling them.

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