A Young Hellebore
"Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing."
-Matsuo Basho
(1644-1694)
(1644-1694)
If you buy a small hellebore, you have a small hellebore for quite a while. A couple years from now this one will be big with lots of leafage & lots of blooms just like our Rose Madder Hellebore, but right now this is all it is, & even so, not too shoddy.
This one was grown for market by Puget Garden Resources & they call it "Border Mix," which means it is a random hybrid that occurred on the border of an area filled with more carefully hybridized plants. Such incidental hybrids are inevitable, & end up wholesaled very cheaply & quite young, so can be found offered at a bargain.
Yet this humble little guy started blooming in February. I took the photograph in March 2002.
In the years to follow, it would have its first fully opened blooms by the third week of January, jumping the gun ahead of our other hellebores, even though it is planted in deeper shade. Flowering is long-lasting too, still flowering up to May. Quite pleasing overall for a discount hellebore.