Hellebores

Boy, were these plants ever a terrible idea as houseplants!!!! They reek! When I brought them from work, the pots had the plastic wrappers common in florist plants, and they had water in them, so before bringing them home, I dumped out the water and washed it with soap- it smelled very bad (like vomit) but sometimes water with organic material that sits around would smell like that, so I didn't think much of it...

Well, the next day, the whole house smelled like vomit, even though the plants were in a back room, with the door closed much of the time.. I thought it was just the pot still holding the bad smell from the water, so I threw out the plastic wrapper, sprayed the outside of the pot with a household cleaner, rinsed, dipped in a bucket of water with bleach (only the plastic pot, not wetting the soil) rinsed, and dipped in vinegar water, rinsed..l the plant/pot seemed to be mostly odour free, so I thought it was good-- but apparently not! after several days- most of which spent with the front door open, fans on, candles burning, the door to that room closed, and still the house smells, especially once the front door is closed!
Next effort will be to enclose the two plants in a large clear plastic bag.. still far too cold to put the plants outdoors when they are not used to it, but if the bags don't work they will be outside-- much longer, and I will get put out....lol

Well, darn... who would have thought?  It's great to get some desirable plants for free so I hope the plastic bag contains the smell. 

Lori wrote:

Well, darn... who would have thought?  It's great to get some desirable plants for free so I hope the plastic bag contains the smell. 

I hope so too! Were I living alone I might put up with the smell (locked away in another room) but for the non-plant lovers in the house, there really is no pay-off...lol
I tried looking up the smell a bit, and came up with Helleborus foetidus, so the genus does have some reputation, though I think these are probably niger- which I eventually found some references to the scent of in herbals- 'offensive odour when leaves crushed' Perhaps it was the clipping they did of the dead leaves which released the fragrance....though the drained water really smelled, so must come from the roots too!

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......

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....

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...

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....

Interesting observation, Rick, both really nice!

It's following the same pattern as last year Trond .Sure we'll get a few cool fronts coming through from the south yet ,however once bulbs start flowering my mind is on other things ...smile (ie I have a bud on Romulea sabulosa a spectacular large flowered South African which i keep on checking daily, tracking it's progress)

Cheers Dave.

As an aside why does this posting not show up as the most recent contribution under the Family ,Genus,Species thread ?.