Almost done with drooling over that garden in Little Compton, where the last three posts have all been GottaGets.
Chinese Mayapple is a fourth.

Look at those immense fat-star-shaped leaves. A presence in the garden that is prehistoric—and I mean that as high praise. I'm cursed with a vast swathe of native mayapple, which is common enough in general, let alone widespread enough in my own garden, to have long ago lost its charm. Ah the thrill of the exotic, though: Chinese mayapple, here I come.

No really, that's the a good "common" name. Palm-like single leaves, erupting in Spring just like mayapples—but opening out to these cut-to-threads discs. Shredded umbrellas: much more descriptive. As ever, my question is how had I not beforehand understood that this plant is irresistible, essential, exciting, not to mention easy?
Not rip-snorting when it comes to forming a big colony in a hurry, true. But otherwise easy.
And so of course, did I plant it a decade ago? Then I'd have had a big colony by now too.
But no. Life is a series of humbling moments interspersed with some joyful ones, then some horrible ones. But mainly, humble moments. So I'm picking myself up and getting over this shocking omission from my own gardens. I've had decades of practice at the humble thing. No, let's not consider for a moment that a horticultural society is coming to tour my garden in a week. An expansive colony of shredded umbrellas like this one says (but alas, only to the cognoscenti), "Yes, I knew what this beauty was that long ago, so long that my colony is now this big, truly huge. But you?Your best hope is to start now. Even so, you'll never catch up."
Ugh: to be seeing the front end of Sixty and seeing that, truly, I'll never catch up. (Let alone facing that I'll be seeing the front end of Seventy by the time my colony of Shredded Umbrellas can humble visitors.) Humble humble humble. But after all, just knowing what Shredded Umbrella plant is, is in itself a victory. Yup, I'll keep telling myself that.

I thought I knew hellebores: Evergreen foliage, flat or feathery. Flowers in early Spring and sometimes right in the dead of Winter that are never less than intriguing and sometimes colorful too. And with veins pumping with Deer Don't Like Me, so critters don't chew them. Let's not ignore the affection of the snobs or the gratitude of the multitudes either: Hellebores are popular with both camps so I can ally myself with either as the moment demands.
And now I see that hellebores can beyond what even snobs can dream up, where rarity and foliage frisson turn the corner and—surprise!—head smack into Disneyland or is it Dr. Seuss?
What plant is this, with leaves so divided and so thick that they feel more like quills than frills?  In fanning clusters of up to one hundred a stem.  Looking like the explosion of a mole's green- fireworks factory.  (Hey, you never know what they're really doing in those underground tunnels.  That burrowing-and-root-eating business could just as well be a smokescreen to hide the real work that gets done down there.)  It wasn't a grass, a shrub, or a fern.  Was it some primitive rush or leafless oddity from, oh, high-altitude slopes of South Africa.
On Saturday's garden tour to Little Compton, Rhode Island, this was one of the plants that not only startled cognoscenti, it also roused their patient spouses and companions into "What is it?" attention.
As luck would have it, I had planted three myself barely a month before, so was able to exclaim with sincere enthusiasm as well as dead-on accuracy:  "It's Helleborus multifidus subspecies hercogovinus" and just to keep myself humble, I could add, truthfully, "and they clearly aren't kidding about those multitudes of 'fiduses'.  What the hell's a fidus?"
I see that "fidus" in Latin means loyal, trusty, faithful.  Dogs are named "Fido" because that means "I will obey."  Well well.  And I see that there's the multifidus muscle, with loads of parallel strands of sub-muscles, each "sub" connecting this vertebra to its immediate neighbor on each side as well as a couple of other near neighbors up and down the line, group after group, vertebra after vertabra.  Spines are much more durably flexible because of the multifidus.
Thinking helleborically, then, a fidus is one strand of something that "stays faithful" to another fidus.  On this hellebore, each fidus would be each quill of the leaf, a multifidus the whole cluster of them (up to 180 a stem says the expert),  so stiff they aren't likely even to wave in the breeze, let alone tangle in it.  Each stays near its nearest neighbors—and only them—but keeping its distance all the while.  No entwining or knotting up like worms in the can. Click on the picture, and then click again to really zoom in. Those quills may be joined at the bottom, but they are resolutely independent thereafter. Well OK:  Glad we've got that all figures out.
When you've only seen a plant's picture before, not the plant itself, the 3D presence can be—damn well ought to be—a burst of information and affection on a much deeper channel or much higher plane, for a more direct penetration to that part of the brain that says, "Yes, this is what you've been waiting for".  Helleborus multifidus provides that 3D thrill, oh yes indeed.