2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Now, when winter is slowly gaining strength, it's time to remember the ornamental perennial plant with the name "Hellebore" or "Zimovnik". This plant has been known to people since ancient times. BC knew about its medicinal properties, and its toxicity was not always used for noble purposes. According to one of the hypotheses, the cause of death of the great military leader of antiquity Alexander the Great at the age of only 32 was an overdose of hellebore, which at that time healers used as a laxative
Distribution in nature
The hellebore grows in South-Eastern Europe, in the south-west of Ukraine, in the middle part of the Dniester river basin, in the Caucasus, in the south-west of the Krasnodar Territory.
It can be found on the edges and open glades, in beech and oak forests, less often in spruce and fir forests. It climbs the slopes and gorges of the mountains, reaching 1000 meters above sea level.
Many ornamental and medicinal plants, born in mountainous areas, feel great when they move to the plains. Having turned into cultivated plants of the flat area, they do not lose their decorative and medicinal qualities.
These plants include two types of hellebores: reddish and Caucasian.
Description
Hellebore reddish
The reddish hellebore is a dwarf (height 20-40 cm) perennial plant. Its underground part is often longer than the aboveground one. The rhizome of a plant is of two types: it is either horizontal and thick, or multi-headed and oblique, from which numerous filamentous roots extend into the ground to a depth of 60 centimeters.
Its basal, finger-dissected leaves up to 30 centimeters long have long petioles. Five to seven leafless stems are crowned with drooping flowers in the amount of 1 to 3 on each peduncle. Violet-purple flowers have a greenish tint and wide-open "eyes" gaze at the world.
Fruits - sharp-edged prefabricated leaflets.
Hellebore Caucasian
The Caucasian hellebore is not much higher than the reddish hellebore, it grows from 20 to 50 centimeters. This evergreen perennial has a horizontal short rhizome from which cord-like roots extend.
Long-petiolate leaves are leathery and dissected into several lanceolate parts with a serrate-toothed edge.
On the tops of simple, slightly branched in their upper part, the stems are located greenish-white or greenish-yellow flowers with a brown tint, larger than the reddish hellebore flowers. The flowers reach a diameter of 8 centimeters, while in the reddish hellebore - up to 4 centimeters.
The fruit is a leaflet with a straight long nose.
Growing
The hellebores are not too whimsical, they grow well in partial shade.
Soils are rich in organic matter, moist, well-drained. They respond with abundant flowering to organic and mineral fertilizing and lime application.
These two types of hellebores are propagated by dividing the rhizomes in autumn or spring. Can be propagated by seed, which is even preferable. Seeds are sown in open ground immediately after ripening and harvesting. Seedlings will appear in the spring, delighting with their flowering in the third year of their life.
Although hellebores demonstrate their winter hardiness by their name, it will be safer to cover them with fallen leaves for the winter.
Use in the garden
Hellebores bloom in April-May, delighting with an abundance of flowers for a whole month. The Caucasian hellebore blooms for 5 days longer than the reddish hellebore. Both are prized for their early and decorative flowering.
Hellebars are suitable for shade gardening and are used in the curbs and foreground of mixborders. Good for cutting. Used for winter forcing.
Healing action
Hellebore leaves and roots are used to treat chronic heart failure and epilepsy. With plant sap, they relieve pain in the legs and lower back, with diseases of the bladder.
Contraindications: due to the toxicity of the plant, self-medication is not recommended.
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