Few spring flowers have the ability to raise the gardener's pulse-rate and feed an acquisitive fervour like the hellebore. It is probably the hybrids of Helleborus orientalis, the Lenten Rose, that cause the greatest rumpus.
For years I was unable to see what all the fuss was about. My own few clumps of Lenten rose are certainly very welcome at this time, when little else is in flower, but their slightly-dingy, pinky-green, downcast blossoms don't reduce me to the jellylike condition I've often witnessed in serious hellebore fanciers. Do I lack sophistication? Are hellebore people being over-precious?
I can't answer the first question, but the response to the second is most likely no. Part of my problem, I have discovered, is that I have mediocre hellebores. The difference between a good hellebore and an average one is as pronounced as that between a piece of many-toned, aged Cheddar and a rubber slab of processed cheese. In both instances the latter fills the gap, but you rarely crave for more.
Hellebores are members of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), a large clan that embraces such a motley bunch that it's a shock to learn they are related: clematis, anemone, pasque flower, delphinium, aquilegia, love-in-a-mist and about 50 other plant genera. What is even more shocking - especially when you think of blowsy, large-flowered clematis - is that the petals of this family are not petals at all, they are enlarged, mutant sepals (the usually-green sheaths that cover the flower-bud before it unfolds). I can't help feeling that the buttercup family is passing off its overcoats as party dresses.
But an advantage of this is that the bogus petals (known as tepals or perianth segments, to be correct) are very hard-wearing attire, and in hellebores, they withstand stalwartly the rigours of harsh spring weather. In the wild, the three subspecies of H. orientalis usually come in varying shades of off-white, green, muted purple or rose, sometimes with red or maroon spots. But cross these with other hellebore species and cultivars and you get the covetable Orientalis hybrids with flowers of clear yellow, pure white, acid green, dusty pink, slatey black and peachy buff, with markings that go from gentle blushes to full-blown measles.
Breeders such as Elizabeth Strangman of Kent and the late Helen Ballard of Worcester worked tirelessly at crossing and selecting Orientalis hellebores, producing swoon-making colour combinations and elegant flowershapes. The tepals on a good Lenten rose are generally shapely and overlapping, and often the flower-head is as large as three inches across. An upturned blossom is also sought after, as most of the appeal is in the colouring on the inside of the tepals, and in the central fountain of golden stamens and coloured nectaries (little flattened tubes - in fact, the petals).
But most hellebores, however well-bred, still hang their heads, so that connoisseurs must crouch and duck their way through a collection. A mirror on a stick, as suggested by one devotee, would be a useful viewing-tool. If you can bear to pluck them, the way to admire the flowers is to float them in a glass bowl - as in our picture of beauties from the garden of hellebore-fancier Angela Lawlor in Castleknock. They will last up to a week like this, but they dislike central heating, and "are best put into the larder at night", according to the great British plantsman, Graham Stuart Thomas.
The Orientalis hybrids are greedy feeders, and should have plenty of organic matter - garden compost, leaf-mould, well-rotted manure - mixed into the planting hole, along with a smattering of blood-fish-and-bone (now that bonemeal is off the shelves). If you think of it, mulch around the plant with manure in late summer, as this is when the flower buds are being formed. Hellebores are woodland plants, and do well in north-facing borders or semi-shade - although they seem perfectly happy in the sun if the soil is bulked up with moisture-retentive material. The flowers look better - and fungal disease may be prevented - if you remove last year's tired foliage in late winter. You can mulch again then.
Named hybrids, like the blue-black `Philip Ballard', the upstanding, primrose-yellow `Citron' and the wine-spotted, peasoup-green `Old Ugly' are undeniably lovely, but are practically impossible to get in Ireland. Dedicated hellebore collectors make pilgrimages to England for these, and for the fashionable doubles, picotees and anemone-centred forms.
But often just as desirable are the unnamed seedlings that arise at the feet of choice hellebores. Look out for these at plant sales and on garden visits. I've already wheedled some promising infants from a hellebore-crazed friend and will be ousting my own straggly, murk-coloured blossoms to make room for them.
Finally, two easy, evergreen hellebores with pleasing, sculpted leaves and palegreen cups are H. foetidus (the stinking hellebore) and H. argutifolius (the Corsican hellebore). In my garden, both seed about prodigiously and flower for months from midwinter onwards. H. foetidus is especially valuable, growing in the most impoverished, gloomiest places. Strangely, it is hardly foetid at all, unlike H. argutifolius, which has a definite pong of fox hormone.
Jane Powers can be contacted at: jpowers@irish-times.ie