I haven't seen it yet locally, but any "new" hellebore intrigues me so I had to look it up! You know, CPG, I can't say that it's so much different from any other xsternii I've seen.....maybe looks more like a plant from the 'Blackthorn Strain' with that dusky coloring. Sometimes I wonder if the product that keeps coming out of Terra Nova (with huge price tags) is unique enough to be justified :-) And this one looks so much like a lot of other new hybrds on the market - xericsmithii 'Pink Beauty', 'Ivory Prince', etc.

xsternii should be OK for you in zone 6, if a tad marginal. If it were me, I'd be inclined to go with 'Ivory Price' instead, which has a very similar appearance (and outstanding foliage) and is a lot more cold hardy.

Hey gardengal, thanks for the comments. I like 'Hot Flash' for the reddish stems and veins (in contrast with the silver). Is that also in the 'Blackthorn Strain'? Also, in general, I haven't seen the 'Blackthorn Strain' readily available.

As for Terra Nova, I agree with you partly -- they always offer a few "duds" -- but most are pretty good. Some are absolute winners.

I've grown 'Ivory Prince' -- it is a beauty!

I just checked my old garden, and 'Hot Flash' survived another winter here... so it seems to be a particular hardy selection as well.

Just bought one this spring. It's a variety of sternii from tissue culture, but the flowers are larger than those on my other sternii plants; I guess this could be a cultural variation, but it's a nice plant, nonetheless. Pure lividus (or what appears to be such) is hardy here, so that's really not an issue, but these intergenerics are turning out to be great garden plants, especially in sunnier locations.

Duh - I meant "interspecific hybrids" - too early to be posting!

I purchased a number of TN's offering of H. x hybridus 'Mellow Yellow' to see if they would indeed produce a quality yellow flower. Very few produced the colors depicted on their website and some were pink, instead of yellow. A call to TN produced the revelation that they were produced sexually, not TC.
Their Winter Jewels Collection is also produced sexually, so it would be advisable to purchase them in bloom, to determine if it is a true clone.
Rb

I think most (myself included) just assume that all TN's offerings are propagated by tissue culture.

As for Hellebores, I'm fairly certain that most, if not all, of the different flower-coloured varieties (the orientalis/hybridus types) are still seed strains, e.g. 'Golden Sunrise' and the 'Mellow Yellow' you tried. Why that is, I'm not sure.

Recent introductions like Ivory Prince and 'HGC Josef Lemper' are clearly from tissue culture. For the moment, I'm assuming 'Hot Flash' is as well. The few plants that I've seen are identical as far as I can tell.

Actually, many of the H. x hybridus plants are being produced through tissue culture these days. I know Heronswood offers several clonal cultivars, and Dick and Judith Tyler of Pine Knot Farms have begun an extensive tissue culturing program to reproduce the best forms of their single and double hybrids. I have mixed feelings about this, since part of the joy of growing them for me has always been the endless variation among seedlings, but the wider availability of superior plants can only provide a leap ahead in terms of breeding better plants faster, not to mention the landscaping advantages for those who insist that everything has to "match".

bubba, to say that "many" H. x hybridus are being produced through tc these days is somewhat mis-leading. I'm fairly certain that the relative quantity that Heronswood and Pine Knot supply to the public is tiny. All of the large propagators (Skagit, Terra Nova, Walters, etc.) that I know, still for some reason offer their orientalis/hybridus selections as seed strains. This is despite that fact that these nurseries are very experienced with the tc process.

In any case, as it is obviously possible, it would seem it is only a matter of time until the tc varieties are more readily available.