![]() ![]() Some think that the song’s rose is a hellebore. At that time “ros” or “rosa” was a generic term for flower. Although of metaphorical import here, it is important to remember that a literal flower is at the root of the metaphor. I think again (see previous blog called “Snow as Metaphor: Revealing and Concealing”) of the very old 15th century Christmas carol “Es ist ein ros entsprungen.” Its centerpiece is a rose that blooms in winter. The primula will survive also, though its more delicate greenery will get glassy, frozen looking if very low temperatures come. The one flower of the hellebore open in Mustoe today. If winter comes now, when all these buds, so delicately striated pink and white, are ready to open, what will happen? It will survive. The plant now has between 50 and 100 buds. Every year it pops up in snow in the coldest of temperatures here in the hollow. It is has been spring-like here for a month. I am not surprised the hellebore is budding and even opening flowers. Last year when here in the hollow I reported about reading Antarctic explorers and braving a blizzard to experience the chill. It has been unusually warm here in western Virginia as in most of northeastern North America. ![]() When this occurs in a thrum-eyed flower (anthers visible, stigma invisible), one has “the last word in Polyanthus elegance” according to Florence Bellis, renowned primrose breeder (APS, 1943, p. ![]() This is called the rose-crown or the rose-eye. Notice the circle of anthers resting in a golden yellow cup slightly raised above the petals at the center of the flower. The primrose in the noon sun on January 1, 2016. ![]()
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