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.