Houttuynia cordata (chameleon)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by Luka S. (someplant) — fig. a Luka S. (someplant), CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205755493

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁 — fig. b WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205386751

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by Lauren Gillett — fig. c Lauren Gillett, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205749406

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by 岸本年郎 — fig. d 岸本年郎, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200109960

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by Se Lena — fig. e Se Lena, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199651033

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by donwerth-chikamatsu — fig. f donwerth-chikamatsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200148687

Houttuynia cordata, photographed by Patrick M. Lydon — fig. g Patrick M. Lydon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194245054

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 18 botanical countries

Native distribution of Houttuynia cordata, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
China North-Central	CHN	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central	CHC
China Southeast	CHS
Hainan	CHH
Japan	JAP
Korea	KOR
Ogasawara-shoto	OGA
Taiwan	TAI
Tibet	CHT
Assam	ASS	ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh	BAN
Cambodia	CBD
East Himalaya	EHM
Myanmar	MYA
Nepal	NEP
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE
West Himalaya	WHM

Not drawn on the map: Ogasawara-shoto. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 721 in flower of 810 examined

21%

28%

94%

98%

95%

67%

48%

55%

Proportion of examined Houttuynia cordata in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	3	too few examined
Feb	1	2	too few examined
Mar	3	14	21%	8% to 48%
Apr	8	29	28%	15% to 46%
May	300	318	94%	91% to 96%
Jun	296	301	98%	96% to 99%
Jul	73	77	95%	87% to 98%
Aug	16	24	67%	47% to 82%
Sep	12	25	48%	30% to 67%
Oct	6	11	55%	28% to 79%
Nov	3	4	too few examined
Dec	1	2	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Houttuynia cordata 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. 721 of 810 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 9 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.

Houttuynia cordata f. polypetaloidea T.Yamaz.
Houttuynia cordata f. viridis J.Ohara
Houttuynia cordata var. plena Makino
Houttuynia cordata var. variegata Makino
Houttuynia emeiensis Z.Y.Zhu & S.L.Zhang
Houttuynia foetida G.Don
Polypara cochinchinensis Lour.
Polypara cordata Kuntze
Polypara cordata (Thunb.) H.Buek

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.