The pods ripen and the seeds fall out. Most seedlings appear around the parent plant.

There is no elaiosome on hellebore seed, so I am not sure how or if the seed carry any sort of strong attraction. I have read numerous reports that mice are fond of seed, though I have no personal experience to verify this.

As Carol noted, the vast majority of seedlings germinate beneath the parent plant. I have had several anomolous cases of seedlings germinating 30 or 40 feet away from the parent plant...uphill. This has always been a curiosity for me. I have several scattered H. foetidus plants that germinated 10 or more feet above the parents in terms of elevation, so runoff did not disperse them.

Hello all ,

The seeds of Helleborus are ( in general ) black with a white appendix or attachment .
The appendix of the seed of H. argutifolius and foetidus is very big .
Over here it is called " ants' bread " ( translation ) and it is told that the ants take the seed away not for the seed but for the bread .
I could observe seedlings of H. hybridus at 1 meter and H. argutifolius at more than 5 meter from the mother-plant .
It is always possible that when the seedpods open then the seeds are thrown away , but if not , then I think my ants have some meter more pleasure to eat the bigger bread or perhaps they have studied economics .

johan

Here is a link that might be useful: fynwerk

Interesting. I have never noticed this appendix really. Does it stay with the seed or is it attached to the carpels? Maybe I am blind or not paying attention.
It is really obvious to me on seeds like Stylophyllum, Jeffersonia, etc.... These seeds are hydrophillic, so it seems they do use this "bread" for distribution.... and maybe also for planting. For example if the ant takes the seed underground it may help keep it from total dessication.
Of course I don't know much, but I sure enjoy thinking about it.
Joseph

hello,
My hellebores were given to me last summer and they have not bloomed yet. However, baby hellebores are growing around the mother plant. I have dug them up and planted them in other locations and they are doing fine.
May in Atlanta

Mice and short tailed voles are certainly fond of the seed. Whether they carry them back to the nest or eat them is situ would be a test. I have not found clusters of seedlings away from parent plants, but rather scattered throughout. This would suggest that they carry them back(occasionally dropping a few) and eat the whole seed rather than the Ant-bread theory where they would leave clusters of remains. My seed pods regularly get opened by the voles, just as they're coming ripe I'll find scattered remains of chewed through pods on the ground and no seed. They leave the sepals intact so the plant doesn't appear damaged. Much better than with Paris where they chop the stem to harvest the seed!!

In the wild these plants can grow in fairly exposed conditions and on stony ground and I would think wind scatter could have a big effect with the seed coming to rest in cracks and crevices.

I have noticed with H.foetidus that you get seedlings at a distance, which would support the ant theory, but you get very little germination under the parent plant.....until it dies then suddenly you get a couple of hundred. This is most probably due to the very poor light under these big dense plants, but there may also be chemical suppressents present while the parent is alive. Any views??

Cheers Greenmanplants

Hellebores must solve a problem common to many plants whose seeds are not wind-dispersed: how to get the seeds out of the shadow of the mother plant, so that the seeds germinate in a location in which they are not competing with the mother plant for light, water and soil nutrients.

Hellebores share one evolutionary adaptation common to many plants trying to get their seeds out and about: as the flowers set seed, the flower stems elongate, so that when the seed capsules open and drop their seed, most seeds do not fall directly on top of the mother plant. Occasional natural soil disturbance may also move some of the seeds away from the mother plant. But most of us have seen the typically large colonies of seedlings beneath a mother plant, growing there because they never got too far from the mother plant. Flower stem elongation and random soil disturbance alone do not solve the hellebore's seed dispersal problem very effectively.

So hellebores entered into a coevolutionary relationship with an insect partner: ants.

Hellebores evolved elaiosomes, little nutrient-rich packages with a scent that is powerfully attractive to ants. A number of plants, such as cyclamen, have elaiosome appendages on their seeds, and are also ant-dispersed. Elaiosomes are best seen on fresh seed. They are a small structure that lies lengthwise along the seed. Elaisomes develop right along with the seed and can also be seen clearly on immature seed, somewhat like the string on a stringbean.

Not every hellebore seed is fortunate enough to be seized upon and carried home by an ant, but it happens often enough that it pays off for the plant to invest significant energy reserves in forming the elaiosome.

When an ant takes the hellebore seed back to the colony, the elaiosome is devoured, but the seed is left intact. Ants are extremely tidy creatures, so once the elaiosome has been consumed, a worker ant will move the remaining hellebore seed to the colony's "garbage dump," which is usually close to surface and rich in organic matter. This is a perfect situation for the seed to germinate. It's covered with a bit of soil, it has access to organic nutrients, and if the colony is at some distance from the mother plant, the seedling that germinates will not be in strong competition with other hellebores.

I have many "ant-planted" hellebores and cyclamen in my garden, and I can actually map out their relation to the ant colonies that "nurtured" them.

Many plants use animals as seed dispersal agents. Oaks, for example, use a tremendous amount of their stored energy to create acorns, which are rich in proteins, carbohydrates and fats. These attractive seed "energy bars" are coveted by many animals: bears, deer, humans!, squirrels, woodpeckers, jays, ducks and insects. Most of these consumers don't help the oak with its seed dispersal needs. They just eat the acorn! But jays and squirrels, which cache the acorns for future use, are actually planting acorns for the oak trees - at a distance from the mother oak and at a good soil depth. Although the jays and squirrels will eat many of these acorns, many will be overlooked and will germinate and bear their parent trees' genes into another generation.

Mice and voles are to hellebores like bears, deer and insects are to acorns - they eat the whole seed and this has no benefit to the parent plant.

Greenmanplants, the question you raise about a parent hellebore secreting some kind of allelopathic (germination-inhibiting) chemical is an interesting one. I would guess this is not the case with x hybridus or argutifolius, as there seems to be such abundant germination under them. I'll have to pay closer attention to my foetidus, since they may have a different evolutionary strategy. I would guess that your hypothesis about germination of seedlings being suppressed by too much competition for light, water and soil nutrients is a good one, though.

I'm running an experiment on another aspect of the role of ants in hellebore seed germination. I wondered if the formic acid secreted by ants "stratifies" the seeds with which ants are in contact and encourages them to germinate? Among the contents of the colony "garbage dumps" in which ants deposit hellebore seeds after they have eaten the elaiosomes are corpses of ants past, which are also rich in formic acid. So I crushed some ants and included them in the planting medium for some seeds, and set up a control group of seeds of the same age and quality from the same parent plants, planted them on the same day and have given them the same care, but they are not growing in ant-enriched medium. I'll post my results if they are interesting.

Always experimenting!