Hellebore

Any help on collecting/sowing hellebore seeds? Mine have flowered and are setting seed now. How can I tell when they are ripe? Pods are enlarged and white currently. I know the seeds fall out when grown wild, but when can I take them?

Here you've got some info:

Hellebore seeds ripen from May to early July, fall naturally to the ground under the mother plant, these seeds will usually germinate in late December or early January.

Collect seeds by cutting off the flowers and drying them on large sheets outside in the shade, clean the seeds,taking off plant material, Helleborus require a warm period, followed by a cold period to break dormancy and begin to germinate. If the seeds dry out, the period before germination begins will be extended. Therefore if the seeds are planted in the Autumn of 2001 and do not germinate that winter (2001-2002) it will be the following winter, 2002-2003 before they will begin to appear.

Hope it is of help.

Thanks Cristina, your advice really helps.

Now, out of 3 flowering Hellebores (Hellebore x orientalis), only one flower set seed, and there was only one seed in one pod of 3 flowers! Any thoughts on lousy seed set? Should I hand-pollinate next year?

Kathy

How many species of Hellebores are there?

Brug, there are a lot of different ones, I don't know the exact number, even the experts disagree. The most common ones in North America are the Christmas Rose (H. niger), the Lenten Rose (H. orientalis or H. x hybrid) and the Stinking Hellebore (H. foetidus). Most are native to central to eastern Europe, but new species are being discovered in eastern and central Asia.

I fairly recently discovered these beauties, but they are very expensive and hard to find, locally. England seems to have many good varities, but it takes a long time for them to travel over to US. I don't know if they are capable of being propagated by tissue-culture, but hopefully a method will be discovered soon to get the prices down.

Do you have pictures of any of these species or pictures of hybrids between these species?

Brugman, do you want seeds of these. I have all three of them in the garden.

Most happy camper indeed...Thanks so much for the offer. Can you post pictures for me. If not I can wait for flowers.

http://www.maigold.co.uk/helle3.htm
found this link to some pretty hybrids.

Brugman, I have seeds from H. Foetidus. I'll check with DH and see if he saved any seeds from the H. Orientalis Hybrids. We have quite a few of them. Some are almost black. Email me. I'll check with a few friends too.