Helleborus foetidusL.

Stinking hellebore

WFO wfo-0000719147 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Serena De Santis
fig. a Serena De Santis, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-22 / obs. 199743521
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by John Kenrick Gibson
fig. b John Kenrick Gibson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205240296
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Felicia Seichter
fig. c Felicia Seichter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195380172
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Dr. Sven Gippner
fig. d Dr. Sven Gippner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196645553
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. e Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205217843
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Felicia Seichter
fig. f Felicia Seichter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195386441
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Felicia Seichter
fig. g Felicia Seichter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195380414
Helleborus foetidus, photographed by Felicia Seichter
fig. h Felicia Seichter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195381297

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 948 observations

Peak flowering in Feb, from 948 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 5 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Helleboraster foetidus Moench
  • Helleborus beugesiacus Jord. & Fourr.
  • Helleborus deflexifolius Jord. & Fourr.
  • Helleborus foetidus subsp. balearicus (L.Chodat) Romo
  • Veratrum helleboraster Garsault

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.