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Asarum europaeum
Also called Asarabacca, Hazelwort, Wild Spikenard
A low creeping evergreen perennial with glossy kidney-shaped leaves, grown mainly as shade groundcover. It needs cool, shaded, humus-rich ground, and its roots and leaves are toxic, so keep it away from food use.
Asarum europaeum, known as asarabacca, European wild ginger, hazelwort, and wild spikenard, historically cabarick, is a species of flowering plant in the birthwort family Aristolochiaceae, native to parts of temperate Europe, and also cultivated in gardens. It is a creeping evergreen perennial with glossy green, kidney shaped leaves and solitary dull purple flowers hidden by the leaves. Though its roots have a ginger aroma, it is not closely related to the true culinary ginger Zingiber officinale. European wild ginger is sometimes harvested for use as a spice or a flavoring. In former days, it was used in snuff and also medicinally as an emetic and cathartic.
The FDA warns against consuming Asarum, as it is nephrotoxic and contains the potent carcinogen aristolochic acid.
A. europaeum is quite shade-tolerant and is often employed as groundcover where little else will grow. This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Asarum europaeum has a wide distribution in Europe. It ranges from southern Finland and northern Russia south to southern France, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. It is absent from the British Isles and Scandinavia, and also from northwestern Germany and the Netherlands. Within Europe, the plant is grown outside of its range in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.
Canadian wildginger · British Columbia wildginger · Seonun Wild Ginger · Chinese wild ginger · Wild ginger
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Asarum europaeum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
