The Hellebore

Growing, Arranging, and Falling in Love with the Winter Rose

The first hellebore I ever noticed was one that was growing in a public park behind a fence underneath the shade of a tree deep in the city of Glasgow. I remember noticing this perfect nodding flower, just one, and thinking how it came to be there at all, with no sight of any gardener surrounded by litter and leaf mould. Quite an unceremonious position, but better still, this one flower stayed upright, perfect and beautiful for well over a month before it went to seed and then disappeared as the spring came. Every year that I lived in the city and walked that route, I would look for it, and every year in December a flower appeared. I remember climbing the fence, crouching down to look more closely, and lifting the bloom gently with two fingers. It felt shy, almost private. A flower that didn’t announce itself but caught my attention anyway. To me, that is how hellebores touch us, they meet you where you are, in the quiet season, and stay with you.

What are hellebores? An Introduction to the Winter Garden’s Most Enduring Flower

Hellebores are perennial flowering plants in the genus Helleborus, part of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae). Native to Europe and parts of Asia, they are best known for blooming in winter and early spring, often pushing their flowers through snow or frozen soil, miraculously. Here in Scotland, we see them anytime from mid-to-late December through to early March. Commonly called Lenten roses or Christmas roses, hellebores are actually not roses at all. Their beauty is older and more ancient than the rose family, Rosaceae. Botanically speaking, they are far more interesting. Well, I think so anyway, and I love roses! One of the most fascinating things about hellebores is that what we admire most as gardeners and florists is their long-lasting petals, except these are not petals at all, they are sepals. And I have learned, there is quite the distinction. Sepals are leaf-like structures which protect a flower bud before it opens. In most plants, sepals are green and inconspicuous, at the back of the flower behind the rows of petals when it is fully open. But the Hellebore's sepals are the petals which is amazing!

What are petals and sepals and how are they different? Petals and sepals are very different. A petal is a modified leaf that is part of the flower’s corolla which is the inner ring of non-reproductive flower parts. Structurally, petals are made of plant cells with thin cell walls, a soft and flexible tissue called Parenchyma, and pigment-filled vacuoles (cell storage) containing anthocyanins (reds, purples, blues) and carotenoids (yellows and oranges) which give petals their colours. The key characteristics of petals are that they are thin, delicate, brightly coloured, patterned, and designed to be temporary. They also have specialised cells for reflecting UV light to guide pollinators and to produce scent. Petals will fall off the flower after pollination and exist to attract pollinators visually, and through scent, and structurally (think of the snapdragon hinge and the bee). Like a petal, a sepal is also a modified leaf, but it belongs to the flower’s calyx which is the outermost floral whorl. Sepals are made of thick walled plant cells, supportive tissues, chlorophyll cells, and vascular tissue which is similar to foliage. Sepals are thicker, tougher, and more leaf-like. They can be green, although not always in our case of the dear hellebore. They are designed to be protective, remaining after flowering and after pollination. Sepals protect the developing flower bud from physical damage, think of them like a flower's armour.

In hellebores and some other plants, sepals have evolved to take over the role of petals, and lose much of their chlorophyll, develop strong pigments, and can be showy and colourful just like a petal. They persist long after pollination. Botanists sometimes call these petal-like sepals "tepals", a term used when petals and sepals are indistinguishable but in hellebores, they are sepals by origin, even if they behave like petals. Petals, tepal, sepals, I hope you are still with me! Hellebores are fascinating because their sepals behave like petals by looking like beautiful flower petals, but they are more like leaves that are built to last. Hellebore sepals can be white, green, pink, purple, plum, and black and they persist for weeks or even months in the vase or in the ground. Because sepals don’t fall the way petals do, hellebore flowers age gracefully. Instead of dropping they often fade or deepen in colour, develop green undertones and transition beautifully as seed pods. This is why hellebores last so long in the garden and when cut at the right stage, they can last remarkably well in arrangements. Sometimes for 4 weeks or more! I wonder if this has something to do with the time of year, we need our flowers to be enduring and resilient in the harsh winter.

Hellebores do still have petals though, they are small, tubular structures which are hidden deep inside the flower and have evolved into nectaries, designed to attract early pollinators when few other food sources are available. So, the petals are there, we just can't see them the way we would in other flowers. Look deeply into the centre of the following two images, just inside the pink sepals, you will see a ring of small yellow-green cup-shaped tubes - those are the petals! Within the ring of petals are the anthers which release the pollen, these are the creamy white-yellow bits that look like little matchsticks.

How To Grow Hellebores in Your Garden

Hellebores thrive in partial to full shade so they are great for those areas of the garden that perhaps aren't as easy to grow other things, forgotten corners, underneath trees. They love a damp, woodland-style setting as my little city hellebore once did. I hope it is still flowering on. Hellebores are ideal for planting beneath deciduous trees, where they receive winter and early spring light but are shaded through the warmth and sunlight of summer. They are a good companion for wild garlic and foxgloves. The wild garlic blooming in the spring when you can make room for them by cutting back the previous year's hellebore leaves, and then in the summer the shade of the leathery hellebore foliage will keep the wild garlic bulbs under the ground from drying out. They grow nicely among foxgloves which tower high above the hellebore foliage in the summer.

Plant with the crown just above soil level, add a good couple of inches of compost or leaf mould, water well during establishment and avoid disturbing them once they have settled. Hellebores are slow to establish but very long-lived, remaining in place for decades and improving with age.

In January, remove the old leaves to reveal flowers, dress with some added compost and allow seedlings to self-sow if you enjoy the variation of self-seeded varieties. Hellebores are easy to grow, they ask for very little and give a great deal.

Myth, Medicine and Magic

Long before hellebores were valued as ornamental plants, they were cultivated as medicine. Hellebores carry a long and complex history, in which they were both revered and feared. In Ancient Greece, hellebores were used medicinally and often dangerously so. They were believed to cure madness, melancholy, and an "imbalance of the humours". But hellebores are toxic, and improper use could be fatal.

This duality of both healing and harm has followed hellebores throughout history.

The hellebore was believed to cure melancholy, madness, epilepsy, and possession by the devil. This use persisted for centuries, from Hippocratic medicine right through to Pliny and the Roman authors. The plant’s danger enhanced its mystical qualities, administering a person with a dose would purge the body violently and if taken incorrectly, it could kill. This made it a medicine of last resort, administered only by those who believed something extra powerful was required for whatever ailment or demon they were dealing with.

The Orto Botanico di Padova (1545), the Botanical Garden of Pisa (1544) and the later Chelsea Physic Garden (1673) are the oldest academic botanical gardens in Europe, created specifically to grow medicinal plants for medical students. Hellebores were standard inhabitants in these gardens and were grown under strict supervision, labelled as medicinal, and studied as substances. Hellebores occupied an uneasy place in medicine during these times, acknowledged as powerful, but increasingly controversial as medicinal thinking evolved. With physic gardens serving as living pharmacies, the hellebore was one of its most volatile ingredients and by the 18th and 19th centuries, hellebores were slowly stripped of their medical authority as they were considered too dangerous, unpredictable and steeped in superstition. And so hellebores slipped from the physic garden into the pleasure garden, where it now grows proud.

Hellebores have been cultivated in gardens for centuries and modern garden hellebores owe much to 20th-century breeders who expanded the range of colours and forms from single, double and picotee varieties. Today’s hybrids especially the Helleborus x hybridus are tougher, more floriferous, and more adaptable than their ancestors, making them staples of any shade garden.

Hellebores for flower arranging

Only cut hellebores when the flowers are mature, the flowers are fully open, the anthers are spreading out, and the stems feel firm. It is vital that you sear the base of the stem (only 10mm or less) in boiling water for around 30 seconds to release any air bubbles, you will see the bubbles emerging and then stop. Only then will you have this extended vase life.

Hellebores are not upright flowers. They nod, spill, and lean. It's really important that you allow the flowers to be themselves, to do what they want to do, and face downward if that is what they want! They look particularly beautiful in bowls and bud vases and when paired with bare branches, willow catkins, dried flowers, and evergreen foliage; all perfect for winter flower arranging! Even in a frog where a single stem composition can hold the viewer’s attention in this time of winter scarcity, such is the hellebore's wonder.

Once you notice hellebores, you never quite stop looking for them.

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