SUPERMARKET HELLEBORES
Plants can grow in all kinds of unlikely places. Tiny alpine specimens find footholds in rock crevices. Cacti bloom in the desert. Now, it seems, hellebores grow in supermarkets. Innovations arising from globalized plant breeding efforts have moved us forward another step–I think.
At this time of year, the supermarkets’ plant and flower aisles are full of poinsettias, miniature roses, cyclamen and African violets; the vast majority of which seem to have been raised in Canada. As I rolled my cart by an array of holiday plants the other day, I noticed something that looked remarkably like Helleborus niger, otherwise known as the “Christmas Rose.” The five-petaled, white flowers were the right size and shape and the palmate leaves looked similar to some varieties of Helleborus niger that I have seen. I pulled the plant tag from one of the pots. “Helleborus Gold Collection®” was printed in bold, gold letters on top. Underneath was a web address, www.woodhillgreenhouses.com. When I turned the tag over, I spotted the ubiquitous “Grown in Canada” appellation, along with growing instructions. The grower’s address was given as Lynden, Ontario.
I had never seen any hellebore offered as an indoor pot plant. My curiosity was piqued and, as if by magic, the pot ended up in my cart. In my haste to get home and investigate this horticultural phenomenon, I forgot the laundry soap that I set out to buy.
I searched on “Woodhill Greenhouses” and found the company’s website, which is dominated by photos of African violets. Woodhill describes itself as “a leading wholesale grower and distributor of exclusive plants.” Elsewhere on the website, it lists those plants as African violets, Christmas cactus, spring cactus and helleborus. Available hellebores include Gold Collection varieties that are distributed from November until the end of March to wholesalers and retailers in Canada and the continental United States.
All of this information was interesting, but did not tell the whole story of how hellebores ended up in supermarkets. I searched on “Gold Collection” and “hellebore” and got the answer. The breeder, a German company, has a website www.helleborus.de, which extols the glories of the eight different Helleborus niger varieties that comprise the Gold Collection. The website is comprehensive, with information on hellebore history, lore and care. The breeder’s name is hard to find, but I finally located it in small print on the bottom of one of the pages. Josef Heuger is the breeder and the company is Heuger International. According to information on the English language section of the Heuger website, Herr Heuger’s hellebore breeding efforts have been going on for over 30 years.
What breeding changes made it possible to offer blooming hellebores in supermarkets in December? The most likely answer starts with the deliberate crossing of plants for highly desirable traits including large, outward-facing flowers; specific bloom times and ease of care. Once those objectives were achieved, the plants were propagated vegetatively, which means they were most likely reproduced through tissue culture, rather than grown from seed. Tissue culture propagation allows growers to use small amounts of plant tissue to produce large numbers of clones of the parent plant, thereby insuring that the desirable traits will be uniform in the offspring. This paves the way for mass marketing of relatively inexpensive specimens, like the one I bought in the supermarket.
My hellebore’s varietal name is not on the label, but it is probably ‘Josef Lemper’, named for a celebrated German breeder. Now that I have accounted for ‘Josef’s’ origins, my initial euphoria has given way to concern. Under ordinary circumstances, Helleborus niger are garden perennials; in this climate they generally spend the early winter chilling out until the end of January or the first part of February, when they produce their lovely white blooms. My supermarket plant has been bred to begin blooming indoors in early December. Will it withstand the dry, warmish air in my dining room and stay alive long enough to go out in the garden when the ground thaws in March? If it does, it won’t bloom again until the end of next winter, which is fine with me. But when it blooms, will the flowers appear earlier than those on my established Helleborus niger plants? Only time will answer these questions. All I know for sure is that after one day on my dining room window seat, the flower stems went lax, the blooms drooped and the plant looked sad. I removed it from the window seat, which is above the radiator, and watered it. Eight hours later it looked healthy once more. From now on it will live away from the heat and get water every day.
I hope that ‘Josef Lemper’ is a sterling example of how international horticulture can produce a plant that will live for years in my garden. If not, it wasn’t so expensive that I will resent having to compost it in a month’s time. Either way, the producers are charting new and interesting territory.