Description
(Asarum thunbergii)
This is a slow-growing, evergreen, clump-forming species from the Japanese Islands of Honshu and Kyushu. It has 10-12cm long, pointed, blue-green leaves marked and clouded with sage green, pewter and silvery patterns. In winter it takes on purple hues. New, fresh leaves are made (only) in spring each year.
In spring, the plant makes its lovely, carunculated, dumpy, purple-brown (green infused) flowers that made me think of Medlars the first time I saw them. They have a monstrous beauty to them and if you get close to look at them, you will see that the mouth of the flower is ridged and folded and a touch paler than the rest of the structure and your curiosity will be amply rewarded with a lovely, rather fruity, sweet scent which is very unusual in Asarum.
It needs time to establish, don’t expect too much too soon from this one, it likes to get its roots down before increase is made but it is easily grown, makes good increase and not prone to ills. It likes a humus-rich spot, preferably in light or part shade. It takes frost and shrugs off temperatures which reduce other garden perennials to a pulp. It is so hardy that just a touch of winter protection from the worst cold will enable the foliage to overwinter intact whilst most other species lose their foliage in winter. Plants in an alpine house will give you attractive foliage throughout the winter.
Asarum asaroides (the name means “the Asarum that looks like an Asarum”) was introduced to Holland and to western horticulture, by the German, Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796-1866) , on his return from the Dutch trading post close to Nagasaki, Japan in 1830.
