Gadenin日本語Get the appThe flowers do not drop, so you have to decide when they are over
Hellebore flowers are not petals. What looks like a petal is a sepal, and sepals do not fall off when pollination is finished. Instead they harden, lose their color, often turn green or dusty pink, and stay on the plant for months. This confuses people coming from other perennials, because the plant appears to be in flower long after flowering has actually ended.
The signal that flowering is genuinely over is inside the flower rather than outside it. Look into the center and you will see the seed pods swelling: a cluster of green, beaked capsules where the ring of small nectaries used to be. Once those pods are fattening, the flower has done its job and everything the plant sends there from now on is going into seed rather than into next year's crown.
That is the whole decision to make at this point in the year. Seed is expensive for the plant to produce, and a clump that ripens a full crop of it puts noticeably less into the buds that will flower next winter. If you want the strongest possible clump, cut the stems out. If you want free plants, leave some standing. Most gardeners do a bit of both, and the sensible split is to leave two or three stems on the plants you like best and remove the rest.
Cutting the flower stems out, and how far down to go
On the common stemless kinds, the ones where flower stalks and leaf stalks both come straight out of the ground, cut each spent flower stem right down at the base. Follow it with your fingers to where it emerges from the crown and cut there, leaving no stub. A short length of stem left behind rots slowly at ground level and is exactly the sort of damp, dying tissue that fungal problems start in.
On the shrubby kinds that carry leaves and flowers on the same upright stem, the rule is different and getting it wrong costs you a year. Those stems are biennial: they come up one season, flower the next, and then die. Cut the flowered stems out at ground level after flowering, and leave every stem that did not flower completely untouched, because those are the ones that will carry next winter's display.
Wear gloves. Hellebore sap irritates skin, and a session of cutting stems means a lot of contact with cut surfaces and a lot of sap on your hands. Rinse your hands afterwards even if you wore gloves, and keep the sap away from your eyes.
| Plant type | How to tell which you have | What to cut after flowering | What to leave |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stemless kinds | Leaf stalks and flower stalks both rise separately from the ground | Every spent flower stem, cut at the base | All the new leaves that pushed up during flowering |
| Shrubby, upright kinds | Leaves and flowers are carried together on one woody stem | Only the stems that carried flowers, cut at ground level | Every non-flowering stem, which flowers next year |
| Any plant you want seedlings from | You liked the flower enough to want more of it | Most stems, keeping two or three of the best | The pods you kept, until they split open |
| A young plant in its first or second flowering | Small clump, few flower stems | All the flower stems, as early as you can | Every leaf, so it can build a bigger crown |
| A clump you plan to divide | Wide, congested crown with a bare middle | All flower stems, to save the plant the effort | Nothing else until you lift it in autumn |
Feed and mulch now, because this is when next winter is made
The weeks straight after flowering are when a hellebore builds the crown that flowers next winter. New leaves are expanding, roots are active, and the soil is still moist from winter. Anything you give it now is used; the same feed given in autumn is largely wasted. This is the single most productive fifteen minutes you will spend on the plant all year.
Spread a generous handful of a balanced slow-release fertilizer or well-rotted manure around each clump, keeping it off the crown itself, then cover the ground with two inches (5 cm) of leaf mold or garden compost. Do not dig it in. Hellebore roots run close to the surface and resent being disturbed, so lay the mulch on and let the worms take it down.
Water the clump through any dry spell in the following weeks. It is easy to assume a plant that flowers in winter can be forgotten in spring, but the leaves it makes now have to last a full year, and a clump that goes short of water while they are expanding produces small, hard foliage and a weaker display the following winter.
Keep mulch and manure clear of the crown itself, roughly an inch (2 to 3 cm) all round. Buried crowns rot, and the buds for next winter's flowers are sitting right at soil level where you cannot see them.
Seedlings will come, and they will not look like the parent
If you leave pods on the plant they will ripen, split along one side and fire the seed a short distance from the clump. Germination usually comes the following winter or early spring, and it comes in quantity: a single mature plant can carpet the ground around it with dozens of seedlings, each with a pair of rounded seed leaves and then a first true leaf.
None of those seedlings will be a copy of the parent. Hellebores cross freely with whatever else is flowering nearby, and the seedlings are a lottery: paler, muddier, sometimes better, usually not as good as the plant they came from. Anyone hoping for more of one particular flower is going to be disappointed, and the only way to get an exact copy is division.
That is not a reason to pull them all out. A drift of mixed seedlings under a shrub is one of the nicest things this plant does, and the good ones are worth keeping. But it does mean you should treat the seedlings as new, unknown plants rather than as replacements, and it means you should thin them ruthlessly, because a hundred seedlings crowding into the parent clump will starve both.
- Decide before the pods ripen Cut off any pod you do not want to grow from while it is still green and closed. Once a pod has split, the seed is already on the ground and the decision has been made for you.
- Let the ones you keep dry on the plant Ripe pods turn from green to pale straw and start to gape along one seam. Slip a paper bag over the head a few days before that stage if you want to catch the seed rather than let it scatter.
- Thin the seedlings early In the first spring, pull out everything growing within about four inches (10 cm) of the parent crown. Those are the ones that will compete directly with the plant you actually want.
- Lift the keepers at one true leaf Seedlings move well while they are tiny and badly once they have a real root system. Lift them with a spoon or an old kitchen fork, keeping the roots in a plug of soil, and pot them individually.
- Grow them on for two years before judging A hellebore seedling usually takes two to three years from germination to its first flower. Line them out in a spare bed or in pots, and do not give one a permanent position until you have seen what it does.
- Write down which plant the seed came from Label the batch with the parent plant and the year you collected it. When the seedlings finally flower you will want to know which of your plants throws good offspring and which does not.
What to record while the flowers are still on the plant
The useful notes are the ones you can only take while the flowers are open, so make them before you cut anything. Record the date the first flower opened on each clump and the date the last one faded, because that pair of dates, tracked over several years, is the clearest measure of whether a plant is getting stronger or going backwards.
Alongside that, note where each clump sits and what the flower actually looked like when you tipped it up: color, spotting, whether it faced out or straight down, how many stems the clump carried compared with last year. Add the date you fed and mulched, and the date you cut the flower stems off. Next year those entries tell you whether the extra week you left the pods on cost you flowers, which is a question nobody can answer from memory alone.