Description
(Dwarf Ginseng)
This totally lives up to its name, it is indeed very dwarf – as little as 5cm tall and rarely over 20cm – it is a miniature plant with a miniature rootstock. I need to stress this or you will think it isn’t in the bag or that you have been sold a pup! A tuber the size of a small hazelnut kernel (not the whole nut with a shell) is a huge one, most are pea-sized (petits pois at that) no more than 4-5mm across as you can see from the picture.
Commensurate with these tiny tubers, so the ephemeral top growth is also very dwarf. The leaves appear quickly in early spring (and vanish equally quickly in summer). The 5cm+ stem is slender and bears one to three leaves each divided into three or five leaflets, a little like a small Anemone nemorosa in appearance. The leaflets each have serrated edge and are borne below the flowers, acting as a foil for them.
The flowers are starry and pure white with an intricate structure (in miniature) and are held on short stalks in an open ball (an umbel) over the foliage in mid- to late-spring. Green berries, which finally ripen to yellow (not red as in many species) , sometimes follow in autumn. Berry production depends both on successful pollination and on the plant choosing to be the appropriate sex in spring, as they can be male, hermaphrodite or female, in different years, depending on their vigour.
This is an enchanting little miniature plant. It is found naturally in damp woods in eastern North America only, but it is happy in cultivation is a humus-rich, partly shaded spot in a damp soil. If the site can grow moss on the surface (without being too wet) then conditions are right. It is absolutely perfect to plant under Trillium by the way.
(picture by Mason Brock with thanks) – Public Domain.
New to our lists October 2016
