Houttuynia

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Houttuynia (lat. Houttuynia) - a monotypic genus, consisting of an incredibly colorful plant, from the Savrurovs family.

Description

Houttuynia is a perennial endowed with reddish stems, the height of which often reaches thirty centimeters. The leaves of this moisture-loving beauty are painted in bluish-greenish tones and differ in a rather unusual heart-shaped shape. And the powerful rhizomes of this plant allow it to grow intensively in all directions - they are able to develop even under strong concrete paths, and this noticeably distinguishes hauttuynia from all other rhizome perennials.

The white and rather small flowers of the hauttuinia have five petals each, and this wonderful plant blooms at the very beginning of summer.

There is only one single species in the genus of hauttuynia - this is heart-shaped hauttuynia. From a decorative point of view, a number of its varieties are of great interest. The Plena variety invariably pleases with delightful double flowers. Sort "Chameleon", of course, cannot boast of double flowers, but it compares favorably with other varieties with its variegated white-yellow-red-green leaves. And the variety "Variegata" is characterized by a rather small number of flowers, but it will always delight the eye with surprisingly colorful leaves of reddish-greenish shades, densely covered with creamy and yellow spots.

Where grows

In nature, hauttuinia grows from the Himalayas to Japan itself. You can also meet it in the Transcaucasus, however, as an extremely undesirable weed on impressive tea plantations.

This creeping and easily rooting plant thrives in coastal areas.

Usage

With the help of hauttuinia, it is possible to fill in the gaps that have appeared between crops of more solid height growing in shallow waters in the blink of an eye. It will look no worse in rock gardens or when decorating small swamps and picturesque coastal areas of water bodies. Houttuynia looks especially advantageous against the background of sedges and all kinds of decorative grasses.

The Japanese make an excellent tonic tea from hauttuinia, while the Vietnamese and Chinese cultivate it as a leafy salad.

This moisture-loving beauty is endowed with a number of medicinal properties, however, in order to avoid allergic manifestations, independent experiments with it are not recommended.

Growing and caring

The hauttuynia feels best in sunny places - even with slight shading, its motley leaves quickly turn ordinary green. As for the soils, it is very undemanding to them - despite the fact that hauttuinia is very fond of a well-moistened substrate, it develops just as well on colorful alpine hills.

Ideally, this charming crop is planted in shallow waters or swamps. It is not forbidden to plant hauttuinia in the coastal zone with decently moist soil. Moreover, the depth of its planting should be in the range of five to ten centimeters. In addition, when planting hauttuinia, it is important to immediately take care of limiting the area it occupies - for this, plastic or metal strips are dug in along the entire perimeter to a depth of at least thirty centimeters.

When growing hauttuinia, one should also make sure that there is no excess of nitrogen - neither in the soil, nor in the supplements periodically purchased for it, otherwise this will affect its ability to winter safely.

Houttuynia propagates either by dividing rhizomes or by cuttings. The division is ideally carried out in the spring or in the summer (certainly in the first half, so that the plant has time to get stronger before winter). In general, this beauty is very unpretentious and even boasts quite good frost resistance.