Early Bloomers, Here They Come

I was walking around the gardens this morning and snapped a few pictures.

Just as a quick reminder, LentenRose.com is located in the Piedmont of NE Georgia (US) and our perennial cycle for the Lenten Rose begins early and depending on how far north you go, can begin as many as 6 weeks later than ours.  So if your Lenten Roses don't look exactly like mine, don't worry, it's just the difference in their cycles.

One thing I love about this time of year, here on the farm, is how the Lenten Roses stand out among the fallen leaves in the still coolness of winter mornings.  

The initial burst of growth that signifies the beginning of the new perennial cycle of this beautiful hellebore is in full rush.  The cycle began in the root, sending out duplicates of itself in the form of foliage stems.  These stems will become the formidable leaf canopy that shade and protect the baby seeds when they fall from the flowers.  Ahhh the flowers.  The beautiful flowers......and hooray, the early bloomers are here.

I always like to remind those new to the Lenten Rose that from a seedling, Lenten Roses take 4 years to mature before they will flower for the first time.  It takes a few years but then each plant grows for a lifetime.  So if you are a gardener for a lifetime, this beautiful shade perennial, first among all the hellebores, the lovely Lenten Rose, is for you.

The Christmas Rose

Christmas Rose

I grow a lot of Lenten Roses.  Fields of Lenten Roses.  Last year I harvested a shoe box full of seeds.  I couldn't begin to guess how many tens of thousands of seed were in that box.  To plant them all I tilled up thousands of square feet with my tractor and broadcasted the seed like chicken feed.  The field in the picture above was planted that way back in 2003.  Beautiful.

Each year, around this time, I watch the gardens as the old growth from last years perennial cycle lays over to die and decompose while the new growth begins, sending up its initial volley of foliage shoots.  The flower stalks come next but oh my gosh, there here.  Mid December and my Lenten Roses are beginning to bloom.  Two years ago none of this happened until late Feburary but that's a post for a different day.

This post is about the Christmas Rose, the second 'common name' for the hellebore Orientalis.  The first common name for h.Orientalis is the Lenten Rose.  So why Christmas Rose.  Here's my observation.  With all  the thousands of Lenten Roses growing here on my farm, the earliest flowers that bloom are almost always white.  I don't know why that is but it surely defines why this color variant of the h.Orientalis could take the name of Christmas Rose.  As we see this year, the whites are unfolding their blooms just in time for Christmas.