George,

Young plants quite often throw a flower stem in mid to late summer, often not at all like the true plant, usually (although I have not aggressively tried to hand pollinate) barren in that no seed is set suggesting that the flower is incomplete in more than just colour, I've not recorded when and where but my recollections are of single stems with 1-3 flowers usually quite pale.

I do not know the reasons why any of this happens, but you sometimes also see it after a transplant and I would guess the plants chemistry gets a little thrown.

They've always reverted back to normal afterwards.

Your theory that you have 2 plants together is also possible, but difficult to verify without digging it/them up and pulling them apart..better left until spring to see whether you revert to what you expected.

Cheers Greenmanplants.

Other people report the same observation ,
Hxhybridus flowering out of their period give paler colors and smaller flowers .
My observation , in my garden , is that less than 10% of my paler colors ( only green and white ) flower out of their season and especially those in pots .
The age is not so important . Some plants have flowers with acceptable shape and color . Can we select them and make crosses for reflowering ?
To my opinion , as I could not find information on reflowering capacity for hellebore , it has to do with stress .
I observe also that repotting ( transplanting etc ) gives always a higher percentage of flowering out of time plants .
Other garden plants do the same ex. Iris

johan

a recent discussion of this topic:

Here is a link that might be useful: hellebore prebloom

Thank you Joseph for posting that link. I read it with great interest. I am surprised that the flowers are mostly described as incomplete, and infertile as in other species I have seen double season bloom in this does not appear to be the case. Perhaps the non staminate flowers could be fertilized with stored pollen, but I see no value in such.

Thanks again.

George