We had a few different hellebores at one time in the garden. Some survived, some didn't... I'm not entirely sure which are the survivors (which the deer do not bother), nor what did for the others. But given the choice between the two plants on my label list, I'd say that the survivors are Helleborus argutifolius.
(You must be wondering why we don't know what is in the garden, and what happened to the labels. It is a very long story, involving a massive relandscaping effort (which originally started out as, "we need a new irrigation system, and what do you suggest we do about-?"). In the case of the hellebores, those were put in by a landscape designer (who was drug into the ever-growing project by our landscape contractor). According to my plant label order, some were argutifolius, some were niger 'White Magic', but I vaguely recall at one point thinking that we also had a ringer or two in there. All of the ones that died or went missing, did so in a certain part of the garden that was high shade, and had a fair amount of gopher activity. Those were, at least at one time, labeled. The last part of the planting, done in front of the house (which gets more sun), was done at a time when I was dealing with serious medical issues, and so was not on top of labeling and identifying things. (The landscape designer left the hellebores off the plant list I finally got from her, but judging from the fact that she was drawing on only the local nurseries (and liked to re-use plants), I'd guess those hellebores were a repeat of the originals planted.).)
