Helleborus "Nellie"
At the urging of some of our Japanese friends we undertook to produce a new line of double hellebores that had two very distinct colours on the front and the back of the sepals.
To get this we crossed 'Corrie' with an anemone flowered hybrid that we produced from a cultivated form of H. atrorubens X Mrs Betty Ranicar, this anemone we had already used as a seed parent to produce some outstanding red doubles.
What we got was 'Nellie' and three others very like it.
The flower has a dark reddish coloured outer sepal and a pink picotee inner, with light basal spotting.
'Nellie' is maned for Nellie Carr, dairy farmer, historian, journalist, garden writer, long time friend