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Re: hellebore seeds

The best time to sow hellebore seed is undoubtedly in June or July, soon
after it's collected. Hellebore seed does not need frost for germination,
it needs warm moist conditions followed by a general drop in temperature;
the Orientalis Hybrids often germinate before there has been much actual
frost. It's important to keep the seed moist after sowing; seed of the
Orientalis Hybrids will often germinate at approaching 100% before
Christmas, H. niger usually takes longer.

Collecting seed from hellebores need not be such a difficult task as is
sometimes thought. Pods don't exactly burst, rather they split along one
side revealing the blackening seeds inside then a few days later will have
opened sufficiently for the seeds to fall out. The appearance of seedlings
some distance from parent plants may lead us to believe that the seeds are
flung some way from the plant but in fact ants pick up the seeds after
they've fallen, carry them off, bury them and they then germinate where the
ants have left them.

The simplest approach to seed collection is to check the pods every day and
when a pod first starts to split to cut off the complete flower and leave
it in a paper bag in a dry place for the drying process to be completed.
The seeds then drop into the bag. Tying bags or fabric round individual
flowers can be risky as the individual flower stems (peduncles) are
vulnerable to damage and the flower may wither before the seeds are fully
ripened.

It's worth repeating that collecting seed from garden hellebores which have
been pollinated by bees gives highly unpredictable results as hellebores
have mechanisms to encourage outcrossing rather than self pollination. Self
pollination of the flowers (which are conveniently large) by hand gives
much more control over the quality of the offspring.

And please, if you collect seed from named cultivars do not give it away or
sell it with the name of the cultivar from which it was collected. The only
thing you can be sure of is that seed collected from a named cultivar will
*not* be identical to its parent so should not carry the parent's name -
that way lies only chaos.

You will find more on all this in The Gardeners Guide to Hellebores (David
& Charles in the UK, Timber Press in the US and now also in Dutch) written
by long time hellebore expert and breeder Elizabeth Strangman and myself.

Winter aconites, the subject of other recent postings, are the hellebore's
closest botanical relatives and they too are best sown promptly after
collection for the best germination.


Graham Rice
Northamptonshire UK zone 8

http://thisislondon.com/
http://grahamrice.com/
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