Asarum europaeumL.

European wild ginger

WFO wfo-0000550828 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Asarum europaeum, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205241439
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Elias
fig. b Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205234848
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. c Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205247170
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Vladimir Atachkin
fig. d Vladimir Atachkin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204086452
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Lena Perova
fig. e Lena Perova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203555053
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. f Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203315185
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. g Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203327011
Asarum europaeum, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. h Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203247956

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
04243860
Filed as
Asarum europaeum L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 31 botanical countries

Regions where Asarum europaeum is native: Altay, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayKazakhstanKrasnoyarskNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Asarum europaeum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 286 in flower of 831 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Asarum europaeum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 286 of 831 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,044 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.2 °C -10.6 °C -3.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.2 °C 22.9 °C 25.1 °C
Annual rainfall 548 mm 686 mm 1,083 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 88 mm 110 mm 203 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,044 research-grade observations of Asarum europaeum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 10 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Asarum europaeum f. patens Domin
  • Asarum europaeum f. pseudocapsicum Pawł.
  • Asarum europaeum var. andreanszkyi Pénzes
  • Asarum europaeum var. romanicum Kukkonen & Uotila
  • Asarum italicum (Kukkonen & Uotila) Landolt
  • Asarum lucidum Salisb.
  • Asarum officinale Moench
  • Asarum renifolium Stokes
  • Asarum reniforme Gilib.
  • Asarum rotundifolium St.-Lag.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.