Asarum heterophyllum (variableleaf heartleaf)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Scott Morris — fig. a Scott Morris, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 194106349

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. b Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 201655842

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Zac Peterson — fig. d Zac Peterson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186820770

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Tom Field — fig. e Tom Field, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159125491

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Clay Gibbons — fig. g Clay Gibbons, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 107282642

Asarum heterophyllum, photographed by Philip Vanbergen — fig. h Philip Vanbergen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 107216554

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.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Asarum heterophyllum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Georgia	GEO
Kentucky	KTY
North Carolina	NCA
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Virginia	VRG
West Virginia	WVA

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 294 in flower of 419 examined

57%

87%

91%

84%

52%

Proportion of examined Asarum heterophyllum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	2	too few examined
Feb	16	28	57%	39% to 73%
Mar	88	101	87%	79% to 92%
Apr	127	139	91%	86% to 95%
May	51	61	84%	72% to 91%
Jun	11	21	52%	32% to 72%
Jul	0	16	0%	0% to 19%
Aug	0	9	0%	0% to 30%
Sep	0	14	0%	0% to 22%
Oct	1	12	8%	1% to 35%
Nov	0	7	0%	0% to 35%
Dec	0	9	0%	0% to 30%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Asarum heterophyllum 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. 294 of 419 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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.

Also published as 2 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 heterophyllum var. ochranthum Ashe
Hexastylis heterophylla (Ashe) Small

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol HEHE12. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.