14 RANUNCULACE/E. [HelUhorus. 



In woods and thickets, very rare and scarcely wild. Fl. March, April. If. 



E. Med. — A single plant in St. John's wood, near the entrance at Oakfield, 

 observed there for two or three successive years, in all probability the outcast of a 

 garden, though none could be found in cultivation near the spot. 



Whole herb like the following perfectly smooth and glabrous, with a similar 

 though less powerfully strong smell, but devoid of rigidity, much more slender 

 and less branched. 



Rhizome pale brown, short, slender, fleshy and wrinkled, emitting many long, 

 cylindrical, brownish fibres from 6 — 8 inches to 1 foot or more ih length. Sterns 

 one or more, erect, slender, solid, succulent and flexible, as is the entire plant, 

 subterete, faintly angular and furrowed, naked and simple below, but invested at 

 the base with several ovalo-oblong, sheathing scales, the exterior of which are 

 white and membranous, the interior mostly greenish or purplish and sometimes 

 leafy at the summit. At the top the stem is sparingly branched in a forked man- 

 ner, the divisions diverging, more evidently furrowed and angular, each hearing a 

 terminal flower or two, and a leaf at every bifurcation. Radical leaves appearing 

 with or partly after the flowering stems, very large, on extremely long petioles, 

 much resembling the stem, but with a deep narrow groove or channel on their 

 upper side, and sheathed at bottom with similar scales to those just described, 

 digitate or pedate, cleft into about 7 — 9 deep segments or divisions, of a deep 

 green, flexible, and slightly fleshy or succulent, netted with depressed veins above, 

 mostly lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, acutely, unequally and sometimes coarsely 

 serrate, the serratures mostly mucronato-apiculate, often incurved, the lower part 

 of each segment entire and attenuated to the point of union with the petiole, 

 where it is mostly purplish. These segments are extremely unequal in breadth, 

 the outermost usually confluent, 2- or 3-cleft, occasionally dentate or slightly 

 lohed, the rest or middlemost usually simple or cleft at the summit only. Stem- 

 leaves similar to those of the root, but with fewer segments ; the lowermost on 

 short, dilated, sheathing petioles, the highest of all quite sessile, in 2, 3 or 4 mostly 

 simple, serrated segments, always quite leaf-like, not as in the next species 

 reduced ultimately to ovate, entire, pointed and uncoloured bracts. Flowers soli- 

 tary at the termination of and in the forks of the branches, heuce few and remote, 

 more or less nodding or drooping. Peduncles from 1 — 2 inches in length, angu- 

 lar, wrinkled, and sometimes slightly pubescent at top. Sepals 5 or occasionally, 

 4, obovato-rotundate, nearly equal, pale green or herbaceous, strongly nerved, 

 often a little streaked or dashed with purplish brown at tlie base within, rounded 

 and obtuse or somewhat acute, often with a small point or apiculus, entire or a 

 little crenulate or erose, at first converging, afterwards spreading pretty widely. 

 Petals (nectaries) pale green, numerous (9 — 12), substipitate, obconic or cya- 

 thiform, much compressed, convex at back, concave in front, abruptly truncate, 

 the margins erose, folded together and closing the mouth or nearly so, much 

 shorter than the stamens, very caducous. Stamens deciduous, very pale buS' yel- 

 low, as are the 2-celled laterally dehiscent anthers. Pollen globose, nearly white. 

 Ovaries 3 — 5 (mostly but 3), erect, sessile. Styles longer than the stamens, 

 spreading or recurved at top, their point (stigma) globoso-capitate, papilloso-glan- 

 dulose. 



2. H. fcetidus, L. Stinking Hellebore. Setter-wort. " Stem 

 matiy-flowered leafy, leaves pedate, caljrs converging." — Br. Fl. p. 

 12. E. B. t. 613. 



In woods, thickets and stony bushy places, along hedgebanks and on chalky 

 declivities, but rarely. J^/. January — April. 2f. 



E. Med.— On a steep bank above the ' Crab and Lobster,' Ventnor, but possibly 

 escaped originally from^ the garden of the inn. More certainly wild in rough ground 

 between St. Lawrence's church and the old chapel at Wolverton, where it was 

 pointed out to me by Dr. Martin in 1839, as also on a high, steep and bushy 

 bank a few hundred yards west of the church. Under a stone fence a little to 

 the westward of Pan's farm, in some plenty, Alhert Hamborough, Esq., 1845 !!! 

 Near Hampstead, Miss G. Kilderhee, litt. 1846. 



