Veratrum nigrum Seeds | Black False Hellebore
LATIN NAME: Veratrum nigrum
COMMON NAME: Black False Hellebore
Plant Profile
The leaves are broadly oval with strong parallel pleats running the length of the blade, arranged alternately up a stem that can stand waist high. The flowers are small, star-shaped and a deep maroon-black, packed into a branching spike that opens from the base upward through early summer.
Every part of the plant is poisonous, and dried material in hay is as dangerous as the fresh plant, which is how livestock are most often poisoned. Gardeners who dig a mature clump commonly report numbness in the hands; wear gloves and wash the tools.
Powdered hellebore rhizome was sold for centuries as an insect dust, and the same material was used with great care in the older medical tradition as a purgative and a heart drug. The insecticidal use faded as safer materials arrived, and the medical use disappeared because the gap between a therapeutic dose and a lethal one was far too narrow.
Grown as an ornamental, Veratrum nigrum is one of the few genuinely black-flowered herbaceous plants, and the dark spike above the pleated foliage is unmistakable. It wants deep, moist soil that does not dry out in summer. Give it room; the clump does not appreciate being moved.
Old clumps can be lifted once the flowers have finished and the foliage has begun to yellow, and the rhizome cut into sections with at least one strong bud each. Replant immediately at the original depth.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus makes steroidal alkaloids of the cevanine and jervine types, and veratramine and jervine are the names most often met, along with the protoveratrine esters of the white-flowered species. These compounds act on voltage-gated sodium channels and hold them open, which is why the plant produces vomiting, a slowing heart and low blood pressure. The alkaloid content sits chiefly in the rhizome and roots.
Veratrum alkaloids are extracted from dried rhizome by acid-base partitioning, taking the compounds into dilute acid, back into an organic solvent at high pH, and then separating the mixture by chromatography. In the modern laboratory the profile is read by liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, which can identify the individual cevanine and jervine alkaloids in a single run. Tissue culture of Veratrum has been explored as a way of studying where and at what stage the alkaloids are assembled.
Uses & Benefits
The malformed lambs of the American West were traced back to grazing on a Veratrum, and the active principle was isolated from plant material collected on the range where the ewes had fed. Cyclopamine was identified as the teratogenic compound, and its mechanism was later shown to be the inhibition of hedgehog signalling in the developing embryo.
Because hedgehog signalling is switched on in several cancers, the idea of blocking it with a plant alkaloid became a research programme in its own right, and synthetic derivatives of cyclopamine were made to improve its stability. The black false hellebore is not the source plant, but it carries alkaloids of the same broad family.
Growing from Seed
Sow the seed fresh, as soon as it can be handled, in a pan of moist, humus-rich compost, and leave the pan outdoors through the winter so the cold can work on the seed coat. Veratrum seed loses viability in storage, so keep the medium damp throughout, because a dry winter is the commonest reason for failure with this genus.
The seedling lifts a single narrow cotyledon, and the first true leaf follows with the pleated structure already visible. Move the young plants into individual deep pots once the first true leaf has opened to its full width, and grow them on for a full season before planting out.
Our Take
If you garden near water and want something genuinely black in the border, this is the plant, provided you respect it. Set it beside a monkshood such as Aconitum lycoctonum for a summer of deep blues and blacks, and keep both well away from the kitchen garden. The same damp, shaded ground suits Actaea racemosa, and for a woodland conversation piece on the same enormous scale there is Paris polyphylla.
Related Reading
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