Not to be semantically confused with : Hellebore s [plants with similar names but which belong to the Buttercup Family [Ranunculaceae]]
Not to be confused semantically with : Dark-Red Helleborine (Epipactis atrorubens) [another Helleborine but from a differing Genus] which has dark-red flowers.
Uniquely identifiable characteristics
Distinguishing Feature :
Although some or all the photographs above were taken in France, this Helleborine does (or did) grow in the UK too, although it is very very rare. As your Author writes, botanists are striving to find if any still exist in past known locations (2018).
It is now (2007?) part of Natural Englands' 'Species Recovery Programme' [That link no longer works, but apparently the Species Recovery Programme is still going strong, but your Author cannot find a URL link to it, only to an old 2001 PDF document or a 2007 government-archived document (it is 2018 now). So, although work continues on recovering rare species, this effort is not being widely publicised by governmental departments].
But it appears that there is also now a (registered charity status) Species Recovery Trust which has designs on recovering a few very rare species, listed here, but Red Helleborine is not one of those species.
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