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.