Seasonal Wild Flowers

Latin name

Helleborus niger

Other names

Black Hellebore

Family

Ranunculaceae

Flowering season

January to March

English distribution

Widely grown throughout the UK.

The escape is naturalised in a few places,

mainly in the south.

For a map see the BSBI online atlas for:.

Christmas-rose

Habitat

It is an archaeophyte and probably introduced

.into the UK by the Romans. It has been grown

in UK gardens since the 16th century and was

traditionally used in herbal medicine to treat a

range of conditions. All parts of the plant 

are poisonous and are nowadays only used in

homeopathy when any extracts are much diluted.

Description

Christmas-rose is an evergreen, clump-forming,

perennial herb growing up to 35cm.

Flowers are up to 8cm across and have 5 white

petal-like sepals. Inside the sepals there is whorl

of petals reducerd to tubular nectaries.

There are numerous stamens in whorls. Anthers

are cream and filaments pale green.

There are 3 to 5 carpels and the same number of

green styles and small white stigmas. 

Fruits are many seeded follicles.

Flower stems are robust and have leafy bracts.

Leaves are basal on long, horizontal stems and

divided to form palm-like leaflets.

Christmas-rose spreads by seed and by long 

rhizomes. It can become naturalised in the wild

but is usually not persistent.