=2.= HELLEBOREÆ, HELLEBORE GROUP. This has regular flowers with most frequently a coloured calyx. The petals (honey-leaves) are modified into nectaries; they may be horn-like, provided with a spur, or of a similarly unusual form, or they may be entirely absent. Anthers often extrorse.--_Trollius_ (Globe-flower[36]). The flower is acyclic: many petaloid sepals, succeeding these, most frequently, several _linear_, dark yellow petals, which bear a naked nectary at the base; finally, many stamens and carpels arranged in a spiral (3/8, 8/21).--_Caltha_ (Marsh-marigold, Figs. 375, 377); 5 (-7) yellow sepals, no petals. The foliage-leaves have a large amplexicaul sheath.--_Helleborous_ (Hellebore) has pedate leaves. The flower is acyclic, with 5 large, regular, _persistent_, often petaloid sepals (2/5); small, _horn-like_ petals (honey-leaves; most frequently 13, divergence 8/13) and generally few carpels (Fig. 374).--_Coptis._--_Isopyrum._--_Eranthis_ (Winter Aconite), like _Anemone_, has a 3-leaved involucre and most frequently trimerous flowers, ~6 large petaloid sepals, 6 petals (tubular honey-leaves), 6 oblique rows of stamens, 3–6 carpels~. _Aquilegia_ (Columbine, Fig. 376); the flower is entirely cyclic and has large spurs on all the 5 petals (funnel-shaped honey-leaves); S5 coloured, P5, A5 × (8–12), G5 in regular alternation (Figs. 376, 370); the innermost stamens are often staminodes (Fig. 370).--_Nigella_ (Love-in-the-mist, Fig. 378) has 5 sepals and 8 small, _two-lipped_ petals cleft at the apex (the nectary is covered by the under-lip; Fig. 378 _C_, _D_). The 5 carpels are more or less completely united; and a many-carpellate ovary with free styles is formed in some. Large air-chambers in the external wall of the ovary are formed in _N. damascena_ (Fig. 378).--_Actæa_ (Baneberry) has coloured sepals, either no petals or an indefinite number, and only 1 carpel. The fruit is a berry (or follicle).--~_Cimicifuga_, _Garidella_, _Xanthorhiza_ (S5, P5, A5 + 5, G5).~