Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Virginia Knotweed

Persicaria virginiana

Also called Jumpseed, Virginia Smartweed, American Jumpseed

Virginia Knotweed
Photo: weeg, CC0
Family
Polygonaceae (Buckwheat family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Full sun, Part shade, Shade
Water
Likes moisture
Native range
E. Canada to Mexico
Climate
temperate

About

Persicaria virginiana, also called jumpseed, Virginia knotweed or woodland knotweed is a North American species of smartweed within the buckwheat family. It is unusual as a shade-tolerant member of a mostly sun-loving genus. Jumpseed is a perennial, named for its seeds which can "jump" several feet when a ripe seedpod is disturbed.

Persicaria virginiana blooms in midsummer to late summer/early fall. It has a stalk of small white flowers.

How to grow it

Many variegated cultivars exist including 'Variegata' and 'Painter's Palette'. The cultivated plant prefers medium to moist soil and full sun to part shade.

Where it grows

Persicaria virginiana has a wide native range throughout most of eastern North America (from Ontario and Quebec, south to Florida, and west as far as Texas, Nebraska, and Minnesota/), as well as Japan and the Himalayas.

Other Persicaria plants

Amphibious Bistort · Halberdleaf tearthumb · Smart Weed · Bearded Knotweed · Two-horned smartweed · Prickly Smartweed · Pink Headed Knotweed · Persicaria cespitosa · Chinese Knotweed · Slender Knotweed · Persicaria dichotoma · Tall Knotweed

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Persicaria virginiana by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…