Lenton Roses (Ironically)

Hello everyone - I have been away for a couple of weeks - hope you are all OK.

I have just started gowing these Helebores this season and they are really lovely. However, they have started to produce big fat seed pods on each flower and I am not sure whether to cut the flowers off now in case the plant puts so much energy into producing them that it affec its health. I was hoping to save the seeds so that I can try a bit of cross polination but don't know when to take them off the plant - anyone got any idea?

 

You should let the pods ripen, so don't pick them off too early. Keep an eye on them and when some start to open they should be OK. However leave it a bit late and they will have beaten you to it and be empty! You don't need to keep all the pods on, depending on how large your plants are.
I hope you are patient because it will be a few years before you see any flowers from your seeds, but variations in foliage if any will be evident ealier.
If you actually want to deliberately cross pollinate particular flowers you would either have to isolate the two varieties you want to cross or keep the flowers covered so insects can't get at them.
There is a lot of information on how to do it, here's just one site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/tv_and_radio/factsheets/pages/19.shtml
They are beautiful flowers, aren't they?

 

Thanks Liz - you are a bit of an expert it seems - have you had any success in cross pollinating other species?

 

No, I'm not, Palustris is and TimMurphy who breeds them, goes out to europe and collects plants. I started a small collection this year, I've only had one or two before, but as always first thing I did was read a book about It!
I have grown ordinary ones from seed collected from one of my plants, but as I only had a white and a dark purple at the time I gave the 2 year old plants to school fete, I wasn't expecting any great surprises!

 

Sow the seeds straight away in normal seed sowing compost and keep somewhere shady etc. They should germinate next spring.