Description
L’Abbé Urbain Jean Faurie, a renowned French missionary and botanist, travelled widely in Japan, Formosa and Korea during the 19th century and has some wonderful plants named after him.
This is his Asarum and is a hardy species from northern Japan with dark-green, unmarked, evergreen leaves on a slightly creeping but very compact rhizome. It is not boisterous but it is a nice small-scale ground cover. The small flowers are borne close to the ground, in tight clusters and are urn-shaped in various shades of walnut and mahogany. Despite their sombre-sounding appearance they well repay closer investigation.
Mossy, moist, humus rich soil in mid to half shade, or pot cultivation. USDA Zones 5-9.
You may also see this incorrectly as “faurei” (ei and not iei) and when I last checked, sadly the wrong spelling gives 5 times as many hits on Google as the correct one!
