Not Your Mother’s Hellebores: A New Look at Species and Hybrids (Part 2)

“The Lent Hellebores . . . have become,” said Miss Gertrude Jekyll, “much mixed by hybridization, both natural and intentional, and though they are no doubt kept distinct in botanical gardens, those to be found in private places are for the most part hybrids.” This is all to the good from the gardener’s point of view, for we find among these hybrids many lovely colors—soft ruddy, purplish tones, greenish tints, cream, blush, even pure white ones and some with spotted flowers, or they may be suffused with other hues. - Louise Beebe Wilder, The Garden in Color, 1937

If Gertrude Jekyll and Louise Beebe Wilder could see today’s hybrid hellebores, they would no doubt be stunned. Their lovely “soft ruddy, purplish tones” have been replaced with rich burgundy, plum, and deep black purple in garden hybrids. Selections from interspecific and intersectional crosses are widely available in a range of sizes, leaf shapes, and flower colors, thanks to the miracle of tissue culture. Delicate wild species are at last available from both wild collected and garden seed, further expanding the breadth of the genus for West Coast gardeners from Vancouver to San Diego.

Interspecific and Intersecti...