Aspidistra elatior (Cast Iron Plant)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by Josep Gesti — fig. a Josep Gesti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-09-02 / obs. 154758519

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by harum.koh — fig. b harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 1586140

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by Nicola van Berkel — fig. c Nicola van Berkel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 69647492

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by Alan Weakley — fig. d Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 127684661

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by Joseph Hubbard — fig. e Joseph Hubbard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 124732709

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by りなべる — fig. f りなべる, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113623291

Aspidistra elatior, photographed by Jenny Saito — fig. h Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 29372400

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 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Aspidistra elatior, 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
Japan	JAP	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Taiwan	TAI

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.

Also published as 6 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.

Aspidistra attenuata Hayata
Aspidistra elatior var. elatior
Aspidistra insularis Tillich
Aspidistra punctata var. albomaculata Hook.
Aspidistra variegata (Link) Regel
Plectogyne variegata Link

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.