Do you know how hellebores are pollinated?

[Silvy]

many years ago I found an English site that sold very small hellebores of various colors about a year old from sowing or a little less, and having a fairly large garden I bought several plants and now I have created three or four flower beds in areas where in summer they have the shade of three Liquidambar and in winter all the sun possible

I live in the province of Milan, therefore full Po Valley with a lot of
sultry heat in summer and quite cold and frost in winter, but they live great without problems and bloom every spring

over the years they have multiplied by hybridizing a lot, so that from the new hybridizations, carried out by insects, new shades of the original colors have been born

I would like to learn to pollinate some to obtain new shades of colors .. has anyone ever tried?

many thanks to whoever can give me information

[Jeffnz]

There are many hits on google on hand pollination of hellebores.

In my experience bees can deliver as good an outcome as hand pollination. Hellebore flowers are receptive to pollen soon after the flower begins to open, to discourage bees the flowers and self pollination can be emasculated. Pollen y transfer is best at the warmest time of the day, and I have made 2-3 pollen transfers to the flower. The pollinated flower can then be covered with a  muslin bag and if successful the ovaries will begin to swell. Parental selection is the key to achieving what you are aiming for with a cross. Spots tend to be a dominate gene when using spotted flowers.
If you are looking for double forms then HP of 2 double forms is the only guaranteed way to get doubles. Crossing an anemone form with a double will usually give a high % of double forms. HPing of 2 anemone forms will give doubles along with anemone and singles.
When hand pollinating it is about beating nature to the task.

[Silvy]

many thanks for the answer .. in fact I have obtained several variants from the pollination of bees, but I would like to make one of my own to be able to obtain the color of a hellebore that I had purchased, very small, many years ago, that I liked very much, but that I lost before I could even plant it in the flowerbed, due to a very cold winter

it is called "helleborus hibrydus double hellen sflash" .. it has a double flower on the burgundy red with some white streaks and a little guttate




now I would like to understand what types of colors I should choose to cross to obtain one as similar as possible, because I found a site that explains a bit of genetics rules, which however left me a bit confused

https://ibridatoripercaso.blogspot.com/p/genetica-della-rosa.html

I tried to make some hypotheses

if I cross a Helleborus Double Ellen White Spotte with a Helleborus 'Double Ellen Purple ..could I get closer?

which one could get me close to my final result?

or is it better to have a -Double Ellen Picotee with a Helleborus x hybridus ‘Double Ellen Red’

[Jeffnz]

Modern hybrids have a complex gene pool developed over many generations of hand pollination.
You can be sure that a  double x double and an anemone x double will give predominantly doubles, a single x double may give a double but often anemone and singles. The % of full doubles and anemone forms is dictAted by the double used to make the cross.
When crossing singles with doubles it can take 2-3 generations to achieve a full double, back crossing of an anemone with the double will give the best chance of doubles. Some doubles can have low fertility as well as poor pollen production, this I put down to line breeding.
Colour is more difficult to predict, especially when the parent colours are very different. Spotting is said to be dominant but again it depends upon the parents used.
My suggestion is that you make both crosses and see what the outcome is, that is the excitement of creating your own crosses as you will end up with plants that are unique to you. Reverse crosses are also a way of understanding the dominant genes of the parents.
You should get up to 30 seeds per cross, if you have space than you can grow on all seedlings to flowering, this will give you the ultimate indication of which of the parents is the dominate parent, I have never had the space to do this. I select seedlings that show early vigour and only grow these on to flowering.
Be warned 'breeding' hellebores can become an addictive past time, it has taken me nearly 3+ decades to kick the habit. Good luck, I am sure that you will find the process both rewarding and frustrating.   

[Silvy]

thank you very much .. I really hope to be able to complete this project, I have no shortage of enthusiasm, nor space, I have double hellebores of different colors, I just have to learn how to pollinate well (which I didn't do very well last year) .. but now with a little more information I hope to be able to pick the most suitable moment for the pollen to mature (what I lack .. or at least I hope not is the waiting time for flowering, because it takes at least three years from sowing to see the first flower and it is not a given that it will establish itself immediately .. and now I am 78 years old ... but I hope to hold on for a while longer    )

I thought about doing these crossovers..what do you think?

hypothesis 1 ....Helleborus Double Ellen White Spotte with Helleborus or. 'Double Ellen Purple

hypothesis 2 ....Double Ellen Picotee with Helleborus x hybridus ‘Double Ellen Red’ (in my opinion the least likely to get close to the colour I would like to obtain...the second one is too light)

hypothesis 3.... Double Ellen Picotee Helleborus with . 'Double Ellen Purple

[Silvy]

sorry, you didn't upload the photos of the other two intersections


sorry it took me a while to understand how to insert the photos and correct the post

[Jeffnz]

Pollen release from the anthers will not occur until the flower is fully open and usually mid to late morning as long as there is sufficient warmth. Bees will also be harvesting pollen, this is the challenge that I had as they will strip all pollen in a single visit to a flower. You can bag the flower that you want to collect pollen from to keep the bees at bay.
You can harvest pollen by using a small soft paint brush or by rubbing a plastic pen on a cloth to generate a charge on the pen end then harvest the pollen by placing the tip onto the anthers. Some doubles do not produce a lot of pollen, cant comment on the double Ellen line as they are not available here.
If you want to get genuine double seed google Seed and Bulb Treasures, they are based in Tasmania, Australia and sell a range of seeds including hellebores. The seed comes from controlled crosses and will give almost 100% doubles from seed.
Good luck with your efforts wolud like to see what you develop.

[Silvy]

thank you very much .. I will keep you updated on my experiment, I still have a month to prepare the tulle bags and the tags for recognition (this time I want to do things properly) .. here it is still cold I hope that around the end of February first weeks of March the weather improves

as regards the percentage of double hellebores growing at the moment I can testify that it is quite good... years ago I tried to collect seeds only from double hellebores and to sow them and a good percentage of them were double, considering that in the same flowerbed there are both single-flowered and double-flowered hellebores on which the bees could have collected the pollen


thanks for the advice on the seed site

I looked on https://seedandbulbtreasures.com.au/shop/seeds... but there are no  reds like I am looking for, even if I think that shipping seeds from Australia is subject to many restrictions .. I will try to check..thanks..see you soon

[Silvy]

last question... I still have a doubt... in some videos I noticed that someone removes the anthers from the flower to be pollinated to prevent the pollen of the same flower from self-pollinating, others instead don't... how should I behave?
thank you very much

[Jeffnz]

You can remove the anthers from the flower that will be the female flower, this will avoid self pollination and also discourage bees from visiting the flower as there will be no pollen to attract them.

[Silvy]

OK thank you

[Jeffnz]

Good luck, my other tip is to make sure that you bag the pollinated flowers well before they decide to pop their seed, I have been caught on this to many times.

[Silvy]

thank you very much .. yes I definitely already have the tulle bags ready, in fact I was thinking of inserting them on the flowers as soon as they grow, before they open

[MarcR]

Pollen release from the anthers will not occur until the flower is fully open and usually mid to late morning as long as there is sufficient warmth. Bees will also be harvesting pollen, this is the challenge that I had as they will strip all pollen in a single visit to a flower. You can bag the flower that you want to collect pollen from to keep the bees at bay.
You can harvest pollen by using a small soft paint brush or by rubbing a plastic pen on a cloth to generate a charge on the pen end then harvest the pollen by placing the tip onto the anthers. Some doubles do not produce a lot of pollen, cant comment on the double Ellen line as they are not available here.
If you want to get genuine double seed google Seed and Bulb Treasures, they are based in Tasmania, Australia and sell a range of seeds including hellebores. The seed comes from controlled crosses and will give almost 100% doubles from seed.
Good luck with your efforts wolud like to see what you develop.

Modern hybrids have a complex gene pool developed over many generations of hand pollination.
You can be sure that a  double x double and an anemone x double will give predominantly doubles, a single x double may give a double but often anemone and singles. The % of full doubles and anemone forms is dictAted by the double used to make the cross.
When crossing singles with doubles it can take 2-3 generations to achieve a full double, back crossing of an anemone with the double will give the best chance of doubles. Some doubles can have low fertility as well as poor pollen production, this I put down to line breeding.
Colour is more difficult to predict, especially when the parent colours are very different. Spotting is said to be dominant but again it depends upon the parents used.
My suggestion is that you make both crosses and see what the outcome is, that is the excitement of creating your own crosses as you will end up with plants that are unique to you. Reverse crosses are also a way of understanding the dominant genes of the parents.
You should get up to 30 seeds per cross, if you have space than you can grow on all seedlings to flowering, this will give you the ultimate indication of which of the parents is the dominate parent, I have never had the space to do this. I select seedlings that show early vigour and only grow these on to flowering.
Be warned 'breeding' hellebores can become an addictive past time, it has taken me nearly 3+ decades to kick the habit. Good luck, I am sure that you will find the process both rewarding and frustrating.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for posting your responses to Silvy,  I find them very informative.

[Jeffnz]

After more than 4 decades of 'breeding' hellebores my days of this are over, mainly due to space limitations and failing eye sight. But in saying this I am always happy to share my experiences with any one who is interested. The current trend of nurseries offering tissue cultured hellebores has never been my thing, with most being sterile to boot. the O'Byrne's at North Western Garden Nurseries have developed impressive seed lines of both singles and doubles, when people look at their web site that may be lulled into the belief that they will get an exact replica of the plant in the web site photo, no, thankfully all the NWGN hellebores remain as seed lines not TC'd.