HELLEBORES are mainly hardy perennial, evergreen plants flowering in winter and spring. Their five-petalled flowers resemble those of buttercups but on a much larger scale, and in an extraordinary array of colours and colour combinations – literally from black, through the rainbow to white with only a genuine blue missing.
As well as simple, single, bowl-shaped flowers, some varieties carry fully double flowers with 20 or 30 petals and some varieties are anemone-centred – that is, with a cluster of short petals in the centre of each flower.
In most hellebores the foliage and flowers arise from the crown of the plant on separate stems. The large, leathery, evergreen foliage is boldly divided into at least five and often seven or nine – or
