Ukrainian name is hellebore Lobeliyova, popular names are hellebore, hellebore, chimer, etc.
Liliaceae family – Liliaceae.
For medicinal purposes, rhizomes with roots are used.
It occurs in forest and forest-steppe regions of Ukraine. Grows in moist forest and post-forest meadows, forest edges and clearings, thickets of shrubs. Sometimes it forms thickets with an area of tens of hectares, mainly in Polissya and in the Carpathian region in the basins of the Dnieper, Pripyat, Desna, Dniester rivers (Volyn, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil regions).
Stocks of raw materials are large, but they are decreasing due to the destruction of the plant as poisonous.
Hellebore Lobel is a perennial herbaceous plant with a vertical, short (3-5 cm) and thick (2-7 cm), often multi-headed rhizome and numerous cord-like, slightly branched roots. Stems are thick, hollow, up to ~75–100 cm high, with remnants of last year’s leaves at the base, pubescent in the upper part. Leaves are arcuate, folded along, vaginal. The lower leaves are elliptical or ovate-elliptical, obtuse, the upper ones are lanceolate, sharp, much smaller than the lower ones. Fruits – boxes with numerous seeds, open with three wings. Seeds are winged, flattened, brown. The plant blooms in June – July. The fruits ripen in August – September.
In the Carpathians, a close species of hellebore is found, the harvesting and use of which are allowed on a par with hellebore Lobel. It is impossible to prepare hellebore black. The species differ in a number of characteristics.
Harvest rhizomes with roots in the fall after the death of the aerial parts (August-September) or early in the spring before the start of regrowth in the latter (April). They dig them out with shovels (in dense thickets it is possible to plow them out with a plow), shake off the ground, cut off the remnants of the aerial parts with knives and wash them in cold water. Thick rhizomes are cut lengthwise, while cutting out the rotten parts,
After drying for 1-2 days in the open air, they are dried in attics under an iron roof or under sheds with good ventilation, spreading a layer of 5-10 cm on cloth or paper. With slow drying, in cases where the rhizomes lie in a thick layer, they become moldy and rot. Drying is stopped when the rhizomes begin to break (the roots dry out faster). The yield of dry raw materials is 25%.
According to FS 42-1051-76, the raw material consists of whole or cut rhizomes not less than 2 cm long and 1.5 cm thick, with numerous wrinkled (not shorter than 10 cm) roots. Rhizomes are dark brown outside, straw-yellow roots, white inside with yellow dots of vascular bundles. There is no smell. Taste . do not determine – poisonous! Humidity is not higher than 14%. No more than (percent) is allowed in raw materials: stems or leaves longer than 1 cm – 3, darkened and browned parts – 5, organic (parts of other plants) and mineral impurities, respectively – 0.5 and 1. Ash content (total) is allowed no more than 10%, alkaloids should be at least 1.2%. Storage period 3 years. Re-control is not performed.
Packed in bags weighing 25 kg or bales of 50 kg. Stored in a group of potent raw materials on racks. The dust of dry rhizomes with roots causes irritation of the mucous membranes. When working, it is recommended to use a respirator, moistened gauze bandage, goggles.
All parts of plants contain highly poisonous alkaloids (protoverathrin, protoverine, irmine, yervine, irmerin) and glycoalkaloids (pseudoyervine, isorubiervine), tripartite and similar species.
They are widely used in veterinary medicine as an antiparasitic agent, in the form of hellebore water and tincture.