I don’t believe it would be helpful to have an ephemerals forum. I think there are already too many. Some of the specialist ones get barely any traffic. Even the forum dealing with a plant group as popular as Herbs gets little interest these days. Likewise on other forums. For example, yours is the first pertinent post on Hellebores since May.

Agree with Floral -- not enough traffic on the forums, even Perennials, to warrant a separate one.

You brought out some good points in your post. I try to keep the seasonal strength of sun in the back of mind when planning, and more importantly time of day of sun -- I've learned that hot western sun can be brutal on plants, especially when backed by a structure, even up here in the north. Another thing worth considering is that moisture tends to be abundant in the spring - the ephemerals tend to thrive in sunny, moist conditions of spring before trees leaf out and subsequently shade them suck the moisture away from them. Some sun perennials do beautifully in moist, sunny location through late spring but fry like an egg once hotter, drier, stronger sun conditions arise in summer months (I'm looking right at you globeflower!).

Hellebores are sun plants that tolerate fairly heavy shade and are quite drought tolerant. I agree with both above posts.

I learn more new information from 'general' perennials because I probably would not see a good question like yours if it were relegated to a different forum. I rarely check into other forums besides perennials and the New England forum. I just don't want to spend the time.

Now hostas are different. They are considered perennials, correct? But they are a world unto themselves. I think it makes sense that there's a separate hosta forum

Well yeah, Ken makes a point, for me, in a wet year, Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans) persists rather than being the emphemeral it often is. Currently, I still have fresh looking foliage, which was being produced as late as October. It is hard to impossible to classify things strictly and firmly, because plants adapt to their growing conditions.

I thought ephemerals died out with heat (mentioned above by mkx3). They like it when it's cool, and die out in the heat. Some can stay all summer here if it's cool enough. Maybe that's just for some of them? I categorized all of them that way, but I'm learning, too.

Definition of ephemeral = lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.

So by nature they make an appearance, do their thing, then disappear. We tend to think of them as spring plants, but there are ephemerals in other seasons too, like colchicum. Plants that typically live all season but end up going dormant due to conditions not to their liking (e.g. heat or drought stress) aren't classified as ephemerals.

I have two hellebores. They were looking awful in shade. This year I moved them to a mostly sunny spot and they grew in size and bloomed, which they hadn’t done in the last 5 years. I consider them a plant needing at least 6-8 hours of sun in my zone, Milwaukee Wisconsin.

debra

No Ken I'm not grouping plants according to my wishes. Ephemerals were a well established group of plants long before I came around. And they deserve their own special place to be discussed on this site, like so many other specific plants (hostas, plumerias, hydrangeas, etc).