Polygonum thunbergiiSiebold & Zucc.

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WFO wfo-0001100848 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. a mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-08 / obs. 162251062
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. b mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158776364
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by Nina Filippova
fig. c Nina Filippova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153110997
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by Nina Filippova
fig. d Nina Filippova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152899957
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by Eugene Popov
fig. e Eugene Popov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92777235
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by Eugene Popov
fig. f Eugene Popov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92777154
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by りなべる
fig. g りなべる, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 111699947
Polygonum thunbergii, photographed by Repina Tatyana
fig. h Repina Tatyana, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 49976097

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Polygonum thunbergii is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Korea, Kuril Is., Manchuria, Primorye, Sakhalin, Taiwan, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, East Himalaya, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastInner MongoliaJapanKamchatkaKhabarovskManchuriaPrimoryeSakhalinTaiwanTranscaucasusTürkiyeEast HimalayaNepalThailandVietnam Korea
Native distribution of Polygonum thunbergii, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Kamchatka KAM
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Manchuria CHM
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Taiwan TAI
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. 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 104 in flower of 121 examined

Peak flowering in Nov. Each bar is the share of Polygonum thunbergii 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. 104 of 121 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 14 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.

  • Helxine arifolia Raf.
  • Persicaria hastato-triloba (Meisn.) Okuyama
  • Persicaria sinica Migo
  • Persicaria thunbergii (Siebold & Zucc.) H.Gross
  • Persicaria thunbergii var. stolonifera (F.Schmidt) H.Gross ex Nakai
  • Polygonum arifolium Thunb.
  • Polygonum hastatotrilobum Meisn.
  • Polygonum pteropus Hance
  • Polygonum sinicum (Migo) Fang & Zheng
  • Polygonum stellatotomentosum W.W.Sm. & Ramaswami
  • Polygonum stoloniferum F.Schmidt
  • Polygonum thunbergii var. stoloniferum (F.Schmidt) Makino
  • Tracaulon thunbergii (Siebold & Zucc.) Greene
  • Truellum thunbergii (Siebold & Zucc.) Soják

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol POAR6. public domain. 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.