Helleborus viridis (Christmas-rose)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Thomas Koffel — fig. a Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-25 / obs. 200828769

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Parco Monte Barro — fig. b Parco Monte Barro, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199091735

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Attila Oláh — fig. c Attila Oláh, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197818368

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Björn Sothmann — fig. d Björn Sothmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 195721421

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Emanuele Santarelli — fig. e Emanuele Santarelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 195088780

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. f Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192827896

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Elias — fig. g Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192157406

Helleborus viridis, photographed by Josep Gesti — fig. h Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 185853718

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.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Helleborus viridis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Austria	AUT	EUROPE
Belgium	BGM
France	FRA
Germany	GER
Great Britain	GRB
Italy	ITA
Spain	SPA
Switzerland	SWI

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 425 in flower of 748 examined

78%

92%

77%

37%

27%

10%

30%

Proportion of examined Helleborus viridis in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	52	67	78%	66% to 86%
Feb	157	170	92%	87% to 95%
Mar	137	179	77%	70% to 82%
Apr	46	124	37%	29% to 46%
May	22	83	27%	18% to 37%
Jun	5	55	9%	4% to 20%
Jul	2	30	7%	2% to 21%
Aug	1	10	10%	2% to 40%
Sep	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Oct	0	8	0%	0% to 32%
Nov	0	2	too few examined
Dec	3	10	30%	11% to 60%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Helleborus viridis observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 425 of 748 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 10 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 viridis Moench
Helleborus abruzzicus M.Thomsen, McLewin & B.Mathew
Helleborus angustifolius Host
Helleborus brevicaulis Jord. & Fourr.
Helleborus liguricus M.Thomsen, McLewin & B.Mathew
Helleborus occidentalis Reut.
Helleborus pallidus Host
Helleborus personati Masclef
Helleborus vaginatus Kit. ex Steud.
Helleborus viridiflorus Stokes

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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