Helle-bore

One of the things I love about gardening is the experience it enables of what Buddhists refer to as Beginner’s Mind: I am very much a beginner gardener, and the fact that I inherited my garden means that, over the past two years, I’ve often found myself in a state of confused un-knowing, having to learn about a particular plant and how to care for it. This process is a very rewarding way of gaining knowledge: you begin in a place of complete ignorance, but a bit of practical effort can see even the most rookie gardening efforts quickly beginning to pay off.

Hellebores are a case in point. I have always been a fan of this star of the February / March garden.  I find their muted colours – all soft, greenish pinks and greyed-out plums – powerfully suggestive of the transitional edge of winter and the quiet promise of spring.  I had admired these lovely flowers, but, until we moved to Kintyre, had never grown them. 

I was thrilled to find that many different hellebores had been planted all over the mill garden. Last year I learned how taking the old leaves off can really help these evergreen plants to thrive. I did this in two stages, removing any brown-ish leaves in autumn, and all of the previous year’s leaves when the crowns really got going in February. My reward has been beautiful healthy clumps of hellebores, delighting the eye and lifting the spirits as they nod in the early spring sunshine. 

In learning how to care for my hellebores, I also began to really look at them as a beginner gardener does, with an eye both appreciative and curious. For example, I hadn’t noticed until I began my February leaf-trimming rounds that this gorgeous pale pink cultivar has just four petals (actually sepals, but we’ll come to that later) while all the other cultivars in the mill garden have five. 

So then, of course, I had to go away and read about hellebore species and cultivars, their propensity to hybridise, their many differences . . .

Trying (in vain, it must be said) to figure out which hybrids were growing in the garden made me examine each individual plant much more closely. And what I found when I looked inside the hellebore flowers was very interesting. . . 

. . . because surrounding the stamens and anthers was a curious ring of flattened tubular structures. I had no idea what these tubes were . . . 

. . . but I noticed that when a flower was in full bloom, the tubes were open . . .

 . . . and when the flower passed its peak, that they began to close . . . 

. . .eventually closing entirely . . .

. . .  and being replaced by a developing seedhead. 

My botanical knowledge is minimal, but by reading Graham Rice’s books about hellebores (available on on archive.org)  I discovered that these tubes are what is known as nectaries: a delicious invitation to any insect waking up after a long winter to pay the hellebore a visit and assist with pollination. 

I also came across this interesting research about what makes the nectaries of hellebores particularly attractive to any insect who is brave enough to buzz about on a chilly February day: the nectar the flowers produce is rich in yeast, which generates heat as it ferments. While the muted colours of the flowers which I find so pleasing are not particularly appealing to bees, this heated nectar makes the hellebores an unusually attractive pollinator prospect.

Hellebores effectively invite pollinators in for a delicious cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. 

Roll up, roll up! Hot nectar here! 

Hot beverages for bees! Hot beverages for bees! 

It was at this point, as I regaled him with countless factoids, that Tom suggested I might be in danger of becoming a helle-bore. For example, their petals are not actually petals but sepals and hellebore nectaries aren’t conventional nectaries at all but are rather a very particular kind of petal, something petaloid . . . 

“Isn’t that interesting?” I said to Tom “and look, the light is nice. A good time to get outside and take some photos of those ruffly hellebores” 

“The ruffly hellebores?”

“Yes, the ones round the front. They are interesting because they are biologically recessive”

“biologically recessive?” 

“yes, they have been cultivated to have double flowers, which means that their petaloid nectaries have now become petals . . .”

“ . . . and because they don’t offer bees their tasty hot beverages, they are less attractive to pollinators, and are therefore much less effective at getting pollinated hence, they are biologically recessive”

Uh-oh, have I helle-bored you too, dear reader? I do have more to say – about botanical illustration and its history –  but I’ll perhaps save that for another time. 

In any case, the garden and its hellebores have really helped me this week. 

Thank you, all of you, for your kind and supportive comments on my last post (which mean an awful lot to me). 

I’ve been getting on with the book, as well as getting out in the garden, and I’m happy to say that we should be able to go to print fairly soon. More of this too, anon. 

Enjoy your Sunday, whatever you are up to!