Hellebores

[McDonough]

I just went out and plucked an old Helleborus niger leaf and crushed it, no detectable bad odor.  Then I sniffed at the flowers, and they have a sweet perfume, hadn't noticed that before (to sniff the flowers and not crush other plants around the Helleborus, requires getting into a push-up or planche position; gardening and getting fit at the same time ).

[cohan]

That was what I thought first, Trond- I've smelled rotten herbal tea that smelled exactly the same! But I discarded the water, washed the pots as mentioned above.. I've never encountered a wet potted plant smelling like this- and especially lingering so strongly after the water is removed- its been days! It doesn't seem the roots should be rotting if the new leaves are coming? Unless the rot is more recent, and has not yet killed the growth higher in the pot?? If this is the case, I wonder if I should wash off all the old soil and repot......

[RickR]

You are certainly more forgiving than me, Cohan.   I would have put them in the snowbank for sure.   Although, I did make hypertufa troughs one warm late fall day, and had to cure them inside the house.  But they never smelled that bad.

We just got some in at the Home Depot here - Pink Princess (or Princess Pink), I think they were.  This batch is much nicer than the previous ones, but still...

Also got Erica's in for sale as flowering plants.

[cohan]

Thing is, Rick, this is the only time -actually now that I think about- the only time I've ever seen Hellebores in person, even, much less free..lol.. and paying $20 for one plant is not going to happen, so I'd really like to keep these alive if I can.. (watch now, some local garden centre will be full of them this summer, and cheap....lol)
Trond's comments make me wonder if it could be the soil after all, though I have seen a lot of waterlogged plants and never run across anything that smelled like this.. maybe tomorrow I will try removing all the soil, or a really thorough leaching, though I hate to water them more....

[Tim Ingram]

A few hellebores flowering now. 'Queen of the Night' is a very dark flowered strain developed by Elizabeth Strangman, and ex. 'Cosmos', quite a legendary plant bred by Eric Smith and Jim Archibald. Jim kept many of the true original selections and offered seed of them in his lists. The aim was to get very uniform spotting with a tidy clean margin as here. H. odorus is one of the best species for the garden, with glowing yellow-green flowers, nicely scented.

For many years we grew and sold large numbers of hellebores but never approached the quality of some of these early selections, many of which have been the basis of more recent hybridisation work. Time we started a bit of gentle cross pollination...

[AmyO]

Trond's comments make me wonder if it could be the soil after all, though I have seen a lot of waterlogged plants and never run across anything that smelled like this.. maybe tomorrow I will try removing all the soil, or a really thorough leaching, though I hate to water them more....

Cohan you are on the right track here.....what happened is the pot cover stayed on too long causing lots of rot to occur. I'll bet when you unpot it the roots will be very mushy and stinky. Work off as much of the old soil as you can, rinse off the roots so you can have a good look at what's going on with them. Trim off the rotten ones and then repot into fresh sterile potting mix. And hope for the best...
At the nursery where I used to work we always removed the pot covers as they were sure to collect water and cause lots of damage. some places aren't attentive or even knowledgable to the plants needs. 

[cohan]

Thanks, Amy-- I've seen a lot of abused and waterlogged plants, but never run into any plant that smelled like this in my life!

I took them out of the pots the other day, and thought to remove soil, but the rootball was absolutely solid and I wasn't able to remove more than a few bits from the top-- I know I could have cut it apart but since its going to be a long time still until they can go outside and be planted there, and have another root disturbance, I hesitated to tear them apart now, especially since they were making new leaves..
What I did was wash and wash and wash them, then douse the whole rootball with cinnamon (an effective fungicide, don't know if it has any effect on bacteria) and while my housemate was sleeping, left them out in the living room a while where it's warmer to dry a bit more (and again the next night), and left them out of the pots when they went back into the cool room..
This had some benefit it seems, as the room still smells (my friend said ' Now it smells like cinnamon vomit') but its no longer strong enough to fill the whole house with the smell! I'm not sure how much of the rot was affecting the roots vs the soil, since the plants always looked healthy.. the new leaves were a little chagrined by my vigorous washing, but don't seem fatally damaged.. I just checked on them now, hadn't looked in a day or two, and I will probably need to water them tomorrow, but they do look like they should survive....

[RickR]

Helleborus purpurascens.  This past winter is the first one where both my plants wanted to stay evergreen.  The previous four years, the leaves always turned yellow in the fall.  It seems that for my climate, it might be a maturity thing.

               

[RickR]

Cole Burrell mentioned one time that he tends to prefer the darker hellebore flowers over light colored ones.  This, because the darker colors hold longer into the late spring.  Here is a good example with Ivory Prince and Royal Heritage.  
First pictures taken 25 March.
Second photos one month later, 25 April.

        

        

[cohan]

Interesting observation, Rick, both really nice!