The hellebore, or Lenten Rose as it sometimes called, turns out to have a pretty weird life cycle. This photo shows the seed pod in the same hellebore flower that I photographed in its prime early in the year:
Strange that so beautiful and lush a flower should go to seed and end looking like an alien artifact. A stranger tail still: the seeds of the helleborus flower are spread in my garden as part of the trail of snail slime.
As a gardener, snails are my nemesis. This is the first thing I’ve learned about snails that makes me sympathetic to these slimy creatures, and to believe in them as part of Disney’s “great circle of life”!
