Helleborus

Hellebore today

Helleborus niger,photography Tamara Jare

Spring bouquets in white

Helleborus in snow and in Anticyra

Christmas rose -Helleborus niger-is one of my favourite flowers.Each year, already somewhere in the midst of December ,it brings first flowers of the upcoming spring.When days are short, nights cold,when woods is silent and when snow covers everything under our feet,then its big white flowers show up like a correct botanical drawing. They seem two-dimensional in a way, but on a closer look you may see they are real ones,and even more , they are not three-dimensional,they have the fourth dimension within them :the promise if spring,When I see them I know spring is to come .As all of us sometimes need to believe spring will come I am sending this year’s first helleborus bouquet to my dear friend in hospital.

Hellebore was the main reason for Antikyras’ fame all over the ancient world. The city was famous for its black hellebore (helleborus niger), and for a drug elaborated from the base of white hellebore (veratrum album).^[3] Both species of hellebore are herbs which grew in the vicinity of Antikyra and were regarded as a cure for insanity. This circumstance gave rise to a number of proverbial expressions, like Αντικυρας σε δει or “naviget Anticyram,” and to frequent allusions in the Greek and Latin writers. Hellebore was likewise considered beneficial in cases of gout and epilepsy.from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticyra

.

from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helleborus_niger

 

Helleborus niger or Christhmas in march

Christmas rose bouquet is the one you can get at Ljubljana marketplace each spring.Even more as that, Christmas roses at Ljubljana marketplace define when the spring has come.For 1€ you can take this spring with you.Which really helps us who weren’t early enough hiking nearby forests to pick up our own little bouquet of the first flowers to appear sometimes even in January.

Christmas Rose
Flowers in winter
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Ranunculales
Family:	Ranunculaceae
Genus:	Helleborus
Species:	H. niger
Binomial name
Helleborus nigerfrom:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helleborus_niger