Stinking hellebore
Helleborus foetidus
Family · Ranunculaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The plant with green bell flowers rimmed in purple, flowering in midwinter in mountain woods. Its Portuguese name comes from what it was used for: poisoning crossbow bolts.
Oak woods · Uplands · Scrubland
Also known asdungwort, bear's foot
How to tell it
Leaves divided into many narrow finger-like segments, dark green and leathery, present all year. Green nodding bell flowers with a purple rim, grouped at the top. An unpleasant smell when crushed.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None
The whole plant is violently toxic: it causes vomiting, cramps and cardiac arrest, and the sap burns skin and mucous membranes. It was arrow poison and a livestock dewormer, with results we would now class as poisoning.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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