HELLEBORUS NIGER. 287 
round, variegated with red, and supporting one or two flowers. 
The bracteas, or floral leaves, are ovate, and indented at the 
edges. The calyx (corolla ?) consists of five large, roundish, 
concave sepals, at first white, or of a pale rose colour, deepening 
by age, and finally becoming green, after the impregnation of 
the seed. The petals are tubular and two-lipped. The filaments 
are numerous, from thirty to sixty in number, capillary, and 
supporting yellow anthers. The germens, about six or eight in 
number, become pods, containing many black, shining seeds. 
“Few plants are more elegant; the large, concave flowers, 
white, with a tinge of blush-colour, are finely contrasted with 
the ample dark and shining foliage. The roots are perennial, 
creeping, very black externally, with numerous long, simple, 
perpendicular fibres.” The distinctive characters between the 
Helleborus niger and Helleborus officinalis, or orientalis, seem 
to be, that in the officinalis the flower-stalks do not rise above 
the leaves, but are branched, bearing five or six drooping, con- 
cave flowers, white, turning purplish as they fade; the leaves 
are truly pedate, and their lobes elliptical, twice the breadth of 
the Helleborus niger. The properties of the orientalis are 
much more active, but the effects much the same. 
Woodville says: “If any arguments were required to evince 
the necessity of botanical accuracy in discriminating medicinal 
plants, the Helleborus niger would furnish us with many facts 
in which such arguments might be deduced ; for a great num- 
ber of instances are recorded of the effects of this plant, by which 
it since appears that other plants were mistaken for it, and 
actually employed; of these we may enumerate the Helleborus 
viridis, Adonis vernalis, Troillus Europeus, Actwa spicata, 
Astrantia major, and Aconitum Napellus; and as the roots of 
these plants possess very different powers, we cannot be sur- 
prised that the medical history of this root is not aly conteee | 
and contradictory, but calculated to produce very mischievous 
> 
and even fatal consequences. 
