Flower of the Month: January

The hellebore is one of the earliest blooms to be spotted in the garden, appearing from late winter to early spring.  H. niger is a semi-evergreen perennial to 30cm, with pedately lobed, leathery, dark green leaves and, despite the name, the flowers are usually pure white or pink-flushed white, bowl-shaped flowers up to 8cm in width. Known commonly as the ‘Christmas Rose’ it usually flowers earlier than H. orientalis cultivars, often in January or February, but mine has sometimes not flowered until March. They self-seed freely and they dislike being disturbed.

The main Hellebores to be cultivated by gardeners are the Lenten Rose varieties (Helleborus orientalis) producing large saucer-shaped flowers in a wide range of colour forms from white to pink, plum and deep blackish-purple, often conspicuously spotted reddish-purple. They will bloom from late January onwards.

Helleborus x ericsmithii ‘Ruby Glow’

Helleborus Ruffles

Helleborus Ashwood Gardens Hybrid

Helleborus Ashwood Gardens Hybrid

Helleborus Ruffles Green

Hellebore

They love being in dappled sunlight and need no more than a few hours a day which is why the perfect location is underneath deciduous trees or scattered in a woodland garden. Remove the old blackened leaves and allow the new growth and buds to emerge. They do not require a lot of fertiliser, but do need protecting from slugs. Though having said that mine do seem to survive slug attacks reasonably well.

Macro Monday #69

click to enlarge to full size

Helleborus niger

The second flower to bloom in my garden on February 11th. Though with far fewer buds than last year.

Five Minutes with a dying Helleborus niger

DesleyJane – a lovely arty scientist now living in Melbourne – is also a wonderful photographer and a huge macro fan. She has a new challenge called “regularrandom“ for anyone to join in with which involves spending 5 minutes with the subject matter.

Choose a scene or an object and keep fixed on that object, and shoot for just five minutes.   You can move around the object or scene but try not to interfere with it. See what happens in that five minutes, what changes, how the light changes, what comes into the frame or leaves the frame, or what other parts of the object you can focus on or use to your advantage.

After the ‘Beast from the East’ departed I went to check on my spring flowers that had optimistically begun to flower. My Helleborus niger,  commonly called Christmas rose or black hellebore, was in a sad state. Several stems were broken and bent and the flowers soddened. I rescued one flower and brought it inside to use as the subject for a photo shoot with my macro lens. Because the flower was in a poor state I decided to cut it in half and see what shapes that would yield. Below are my results.

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All photos were taken using my Olympus OM-D E-10 camera and Macro 60mm lens.

If you would like to join in then please visit DJ’s site where you will find more information and ideas about the challenge.

When is a rose not a rose?

When it is a Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger).

January – hellebore

April Flower: Hellebore

Christmas Rose

H. niger is a semi-evergreen perennial to 30cm, with pedately lobed, leathery, dark green leaves and 1-3 pure white or pink-flushed white, bowl-shaped flowers up to 8cm in width. This is my first flower for 2015 and now has eleven beautiful flowers (3 x 3 and 2 x 1). A little late this year though as I usually see a flower open in February.

Floral Friday Fotos

 Helleborus x orientalis  ‘Smokey Blue’

The main Hellebores to be cultivated by gardeners are the Lenten Rose varieties in a wide range of colour forms from white to pink, plum and deep blackish-purple, often conspicuously spotted reddish-purple.  Very rare and very beautiful, the flowers of this variety are said to appear a shade very deep purple to almost black, contrasted by yellow stamens. The saucer-shaped purple-blue flowers from February to April.

More hellebores here.

click HERE  to join in with the challenge