Stinking hellebore is bumblebee heaven

 Stinking hellebore is an unappealing name for a very bee-friendly plant. It has been the epicentre of bumblebee activity in our garden ever since they first emerged from winter hibernation. The green flowers of Helleborus foetidus are a prolific source of nectar over a prolonged flowering period.

There used to be just one plant in the garden but three years ago I collected all the seed it produced and chucked them on ground where I'd removed a holly hedge in the corner of the garden. There are now about a dozen plants flowering, bearing hundreds of flowers. They don't really stink, they're just a bit pungent on a hot afternoon, but that's a small price to pay for providing such a good food resource for queen bumblebees.

The purple-edged, bell-shaped flowers are unusual because those structures that look like petals are, botanically, sepals that protected the bud during its formative stages. The real petals, inside, are arranged around central whorls of stigmas and pollen-loaded stamens, and are rolled into tubes that are prim-full of nectar.

The flower retains its bell-shape until its pollinated but it's just open enough to allow a large bumblebee to hang underneath and force its way in. Even then, the bee needs to have a long tongue to reach all the nectar. Helleborus foetidus makes its visitors work for their reward. 

If you plant Helleborus foetidus once and let it go to seed it will seed itself around the garden, thanks to the white extension called an elaiosome on the outside of the shiny black seeds.This is very attractive to ants, which carry them away, eat the elaiosome and disperse the seeds, which require a winter of freezing temperatures before they'll germinate. 

A bit of a stink

Stinking hellebore Helleborus foetidus isn't the most fragrant of plants - certainly not one that you'd want to bring indoors - but it's a great asset in a wildlife garden, providing nectar for the first queen bees that emerge from hibernation in spring.

Long-tongued species, like this buff-tailed bumblebee queen, can reach nectar that's held in modified, tubular petals arranged in a ring around the outside of the stamens, deep inside the flower. The green and purple-edged 'petals' that enclose the bell-shaped flower are actually sepals.

Refuelled with sugary nectar, this bee is about to leave, its wing-tips bending upwards in the effort to lift that large furry body.

Even when the flowers have been pollinated and the stamens and nectaries fall away the flowers are still attractive to flies, that come to lick nectar residues on the inside of the sepals.

The flowers also seem to attract these tiny Sepsis flies, that sit on the outside of the sepals and perform their courtship dances, raising and lowering their wings. They breed in dung, which might explain their attraction to stinking hellebore as a courtship arena.




Helleborus foetidus seeds itself around the garden, thanks to the white extension called an elaiosome on the outside of the shiny black seeds.This is very attractive to ants, which carry them away, eat the elaiosome and disperse the seeds, which require a winter of freezing temperatures before they'll germinate. 

Dead, but still looking good....

These carline thistles Carlina vulgaris flowered last summer but their papery seed heads survive the winter and still look decorative in spring. Photographed yesterday on the cliffs south of Seaham in Co.Durham, along with...

..... blackthorn coming into bloom ....

..... dog's mercury ......

.... some magnificent, coconut-scented gorse blossom ...

..... stinking hellebore Helleborus foetidus, almost certainly a garden escape .....

..... along with some irrepressible daffodils, struggling to flower through a tangle of last year's bramble stems