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Gunnera manicata
Also called Brazilian Giant Rhubarb
Gunnera manicata is a huge clump-forming perennial with enormous leaves, grown mainly for its size near ponds and damp ground. The key to growing it is abundant moisture and shelter from winter cold and wet.
Gunnera manicata, known as Brazilian giant-rhubarb, giant rhubarb, or dinosaur food is a species of flowering plant in the family Gunneraceae from the coastal Serra do Mar Mountains of Santa Catarina, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul States, Brazil. In cultivation, the name G. manicata has regularly been wrongly applied to the hybrid with G. tinctoria, G. × cryptica.
Giant rhubarb came to be widely cultivated in the United Kingdom and Ireland as an ornamental garden plant. It was primarily grown for its massive leaves. It grows best in damp conditions such as near garden ponds, but dislikes winter cold and wet.
However, in 2022, the Royal Horticultural Society found that these plants were actually Gunnera × cryptica, a hybrid of G. manicata with highly invasive Gunnera tinctoria.
Gunnera manicata is native to the Serra do Mar mountains of coastal Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul states, Brazil, where it is used in traditional medicine for sexually transmitted diseases.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gunnera manicata 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.
