Category: Our Garden

Full blossoms, even in our garden!

Time flies, and it’s already March. (When I say something like that, Chris always says ‘Time passes as usual,’ but I really feel it flying.) It was snowing a bit yesterday, but it’s sunny today.

I was working, and because of a cold, I had a 38.4°C fever (this is a very unusual thing for me; I suspected I had flu but the temperature went down within a day, and I didn’t lose my appetite), and… my favourite Christmas rose came into full blossom this year, too! Until last year, I think H.niger bloomed first and H.orientalis bloomed next; however, they’re all blooming at once this year. Even H.lividus and H.corsicus are also blooming. Sadly, H.foetidus died because of last summer’s heat…

Our Christmas roses were planted little by little starting six years ago, when we started to live in this house. Of course we like this flower, but it is also a great flower to survive without much sunshine. We know, after having planted many things that are good for shady places. (Our yard can’t get much sunshine because the houses next door are very close.)

We usually buy small, one- or two-year-old Christmas roses. (The ones that are actually blooming are too expensive for us, so we can’t buy them often. The one- or two-year-old plants have become cheaper compared to what they were before.) I heard that the first blooms appear after three years, so if we buy a younger one, it doesn’t bloom. They rarely bloom in the second year: that’s just luck. When I plant hellebores in an unsuitable place, they never become big and don’t bloom. In the worst case, it disappears during summer. We hear it’s good for half-shady places, but we can’t say that sunshine is unnecessary. They make seeds easily; I followed a textbook and tried to grow sprouts, but I failed. The natural sprouts growing near the ‘parent’ Christmas rose worked better for me. (Even so, they haven’t bloomed yet.)

As I try to write something about hellebores, however, I am peeping at a gardening book for beginners: NHK gardening as a hobby: Learn how to cultivate Christmas roses in twelve months.

I wrote that it’s a flower, but the part that looks like a petal is actually a calyx. The name ‘Christmas rose’ was originally only for H.niger. H.orientalis is called a Lenten rose. It is also poisonous, so please watch out not to get the sap on your skin!

–YS, 4 March 2006

4 March 2006