The beautiful dusky purple flowers of the Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis, suggest the somewhat sinister character attributed to the poisonous hellebore, which was used to treat madness in antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, the magical and medicinal hellebore of the Greeks is more often identified with the Christmas rose, H. niger, than with the Lenten rose. H. orientalis has been crossed with other species in the same genus, including H. niger, to create the wide array of hybrid hellebores now available to gardeners.