Graham Rice suggests niger ideal as a mother plant, as it produces large flowers on strong stems. he also suggests hooding all the flowers on the mother plant or the entire plant itself to prevent any natural hybridizing and mongrelization.

Sorry, that went out a bit too soon :-) I meant to add that most - maybe all - of the xballardiae crosses do use lividus as the pollen parent.

That would also eliminate the risk of losing the lividus parent in a late season cold snap, since it's far less hardy than niger. I'm beginning to suspect that my lividus strain is is actually x sternii, since I've never lost one during the winter, and Judith Tyler (in a similar zone)says that species isn't hardy for her. Although adult plants do well, I have a devil of a time raising niger seedlings - I lost over 80% of this year's crop during the summer, as compared to only a small loss of the x hybridus seedlings. Lividus is easier for me from seed, so maybe x ballardii would be, too. Probably has something to do with summer heat and humidity - not a problem in the PNW, I'm guessing!

Thanks everyone -- when hybridizing is it typical to pick the more robust plant to be the seed parent?

Karen, part of it is about receptiveness. H. niger has been receptive to some of these very wide (unnatural) crosses. I do not think hooding would be necessary to prevent 'mongreling' as the crosses aren't that easy, or we'd have seed-grown H. niger hybrids in commerce (all are from tissue culture). :-) The only reason you would hood H. niger is to prevent self-pollination or pollination from other H. niger plants. There's no reason you can't try it either way though.

Bubba, I would say you're right. True H. lividus is quite rare, especially in the US.

Good to have your input, jg. I've never taken the time to tell you, but I really enjoy and appreciate your Hellebore website!

Thanks Bubba! I've ignored it lately but plan to add more to it later this spring. I will have to revise the species section eventually as changes to classification are in the works it seems.
Joseph