_Veratrum viride_
_Flowers_--Dingy, pale yellowish or whitish green, growing greener with
age, 1 in. or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching,
spike-like, dense-flowered panicles. Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6
short curved stamens; 3 styles. _Stem:_ Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. tall.
_Leaves:_ Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in. long;
parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves
gradually narrowing; those among flowers small.
_Preferred Habitat_--Swamps, wet woods, low meadows.
_Flowering Season_--May-July.
_Distribution_--British Possessions from ocean to ocean; southward in
the United States to Georgia, Tennessee, and Minnesota.
“Borage and hellebore fill two scenes--
Sovereign plants to purge the veins
Of melancholy, and cheer the heart
Of those black fumes which make it smart.”
Such are the antidotes for madness prescribed by Burton in his “Anatomie
of Melancholy.” But like most medicines, so the homoeopaths have taught
us, the plant that heals may also poison; and the coarse, thick
rootstock of this hellebore sometimes does deadly work. The shining
plaited leaves, put forth so early in the spring they are especially
tempting to grazing cattle on that account, are too well known by most
animals, however, to be touched by them--precisely the end desired, of
course, by the hellebore, nightshade, aconite, cyclamen, Jamestown weed,
and a host of others that resort, for protection, to the low trick of
mixing poisonous chemicals with their cellular juices. Pliny told how
the horses, oxen, and swine of his day were killed by eating the foliage
of the black hellebore. But the flies which cross-fertilize this plant
seem to be uninjured by its nectar.