Hellebores – subtle buttercups of Lent…

My favourite hellebore in a pot - image posterised in PhotoShop...

My hellebores are in flower at the moment (and have been for months), but I have only just realised that this is the RIGHT time for them to be in bloom.

Although I knew they were sometimes called Christmas roses, I now find they are also called Lenten roses. And it IS Lent at the moment. More about the naming of hellebores later…

An iPhone picture of cream oriental hellebores this week in the Cardiff Council garden between the Old Library and St John the Baptist Church

Hellebores aren’t roses, of course, but members of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. It’s a big family, but two other members with more-or-less similarly-shaped flowers are the buttercup and anemone…

Blue anemone coronaria by MathKnight on Wikimedia Commons...

Common creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens, an image by Kristian Peters on Wikimedia Commons

But hellebores are more subtle in colour than those two, in shades of cream, green and purple-red.

Helleborus foetidus, top right, including a cross-section, Helleborus viridis, top left, and several different Helleborus x hybridus flowers, an image by SiGarb on Wikimedia Commons

I have had hellebores in the garden for many years – some have gone on for decades but I have also lost one or two big specimens. My garden is wooded and shady and hellebores are ideal in this situation.

There is a fuller list on Wikipedia, but here are the main species I have grown…

Helleborus argutifolius or Corsican hellebore

This is a Helleborus argutifolius or Corsican hellebore, an image by Tigerente on Wikimedia Commons - sadly I lost my own, which was twice this size...

My favourite hellebore of architectural proportions is H argutifolius or Corsican hellebore. I used to have a big one in a border near the house but annoyingly it was killed when someone put a ladder through it when painting the upstairs windows…

I do wonder whether the ghost of that hellebore lives on in a self-seeded hellebore that appeared on my gravel bed last summer…

Self-seeded hellebore...

The tough leaves are very similar to the H argutifolius, but I suppose these flowers aren’t quite the same. Not bad, though, if it’s some kind of natural hybrid…

Self-seeded hellebore in flower in the garden a few months ago...

Helleborus foetidus or stinking hellebore

Great name, eh? Not that I’ve ever been able to smell it, either pleasantly or unpleasantly.

This is a hellebore I had in a pot for years but I think the cold winter of 2010/11 must have killed it off.

My Helleborus foetidus in its glory days in February 2005 - I think it has now disappeared after a harsh winter...

Here's a Helleborus foetidus at Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire, in the first week of January 2012. Note the red edge to the flowers.

Helleborus orientalis or Helleborus x hybridus

This is the same hellebore as in the posterised picture at the top of this blog post. It's quite beefy compared to most of my Helleborus hybridus varieties...

Most of the Lenten hellebores, such as the cream ones pictured earlier in this blog, in the Cardiff city centre park, are essentially Helleborus orientalis, although they have been so cross-bred over the years for decorative effect that they are now more commonly called Helleborus x hybridus.

A rather isolated Helleborus x hybridus in my back garden. I have only just worked out what those bare flowers at the back are - a bit like the face of a radio telescope - it's what the flower looks like when the stamens drop off...

While H argutifolius and H foetidus have proper leaves growing from the stems of the flowers, these oriental hellebores instead have a rosette of leaves growing from the base. They do have bracts near the top of the otherwise bare stems and this can make them look a bit “weedy”, especially when the leaf rosette flattens down.

A very overshadowed pale pink Helleborus x hybridus flourishing in the shade under a big Hydrangea in the garden - it flowers before the Hydrangea comes into leaf...

Other hellebores – religion, magic and medicine…

The name hellebore is just the English version of the Greek and Latin word Helleborus, the ancient name for the plant. There are several interpretations of the name.

The second part of the name is definitely from the Greek bora, meaning “food”. But the first part may come from ellos/hellos meaning “fawn” (it’s food for beasts) or hele meaning “to take away” (because of its emetic/purgative properties) or even helein, “to kill” (because it’s poisonous).

Plants called “hellebore” in ancient times have been associated with both curing and killing, as well as summoning spirits of the dead, but there is confusion over which modern species was used. “Black hellebore” or Helleborus niger, was used against gout, paralysis and insanity.

Later studies suggested “black hellebore” could be fatal, leading to ringing in the ears, vertigo, swelling of the tongue and throat, vomiting and eventual heart failure, but the preparations used in these studies seem to have been Helleborus viridis or green hellebore, whose roots contain heart-stopping chemicals not present in H niger.

H niger, flowering much earlier than the Lenten rose H orientalis, is sometimes know as the Christmas rose. There is a legend that it sprouted in the snow from the tears of a young girl who had no gift for the baby Jesus when he was born in Bethlehem.

The other medicinal hellebore of the ancients was “white hellebore”, Veratrum album, which was from a completely different plant family.

Who knows which hellebore was responsible for these ancient incidents…

– During the Siege of Kirrha in 585BC the Greeks poisoned the city’s water supply with hellebore and the besieged inhabitants were overcome with diarrhoea.

– Alexander the Great may have been assassinated in Babylon through an overdose of hellebore.

– Melampus of Pylos used hellebore to cure the daughters of King Midas after they were touched by madness and found running naked through the streets screaming (blame Dionysus)…