The Pretty Suicide Plant

False hellebore (sometimes called corn-lily) is conspicuous in size.  The hellebore can attain a height of six feet in our short, high-mountain growing season and the large drooping leaves call for attention wherever the plant grows.  This plant prefers moist locations and will even tolerate having its feet wet.   False hellebore is a robust perennial, willing to emerge along the first exposed shoulders of earth below snowbanks.

The flower is not spectacular, but I consider the false hellebore to be among the most handsome plants found in the Rocky Mountains.  I admire the broad, bright-green leaves and find the spiraling symmetry of growth attractive.  The plants often grow in partially shaded swales and along the edge of flouncing waters.

But this plant holds one of the darkest secrets of all the plants found in the high mountains.

Plants of the Rocky Mountains, one of the field guides I often use to identify flowers and plants, said of this plant: “False Hellebores are violently poisonous.”

False hellebore contains a mix of toxic alkaloids that are potent enough to kill.  Eating only a little of the plant might cause death.  The toxins, under some conditions, may even make the water in which the plant grows toxic enough to cause sickness.  Native Americans used the toxins from false hellebore to poison their arrows and to commit suicide.

Posted is a photograph I captured of false hellebore (the broadleaf plant in the foreground) growing alongside a series of waterfalls I discovered high in the mountains above Lincoln, Montana just yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman