This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a relict plant of our wild past, Heartleaf Ginger, AKA Little-Brown-Jugs (Asarum arifolium).
Heartleaf Ginger is a common forest dweller in the Carolinas, increasing in abundance with altitude. Yet it still has a presence in every county of South Carolina. There are over eleven species of wild gingers found between South Carolina and North Carolina. But Heartleaf Ginger is the only species you’ll find here in the Lowcountry. Beneath the umbrella of a forgotten hardwood grove one can even find Heartleaf Ginger on Edisto Island, nestled between tree roots, draped over leaf litter, and smothered with heavy shade. Heartleaf Ginger needs deep shade on moist but well-drained soils to thrive and most often persists below undisturbed hardwood forests. Here on the Sea Islands, it’s quite scarce due to our flat topography, high water table, and our extensively intensive agricultural history. Meaning when you find a grove of Little-Brown-Jugs here, you know you’re standing in a special place. A relict of our original sea island ecology, trapped on an Island since the last ice age.
Heartleaf Ginger is a perennial plant with a leathery triangular leaf which varies in shape from heart to arrowhead. These leaves are about three-inches long, a dark jade-green, and often patterned with blotches of pastel-green in between the leaf veins. (If you find yourself botanizing in the Appalachians, these blotches between the veins help separate Heartleaf Ginger from its rarer mountain relatives, who have variegation along the veins.) Each leaf is held just above the ground on a short petiole, with the leaves emerging directly from the soil. Heartleaf Ginger can spread by its roots to create an evergreen groundcover in ideal conditions. Yet, it also has an interesting means of spreading by seed.
The flowers of Little-Brown-Jugs are, little brown jugs. It’s in the name. Well, they’re more like little mauve or burgundy jugs, but we’ll let it slide this time. Heartleaf Ginger is a member of the Pipewort family, Aristolochiaceae, which is a plant family with some strangely shaped tubular flowers. Heartleaf Ginger’s flowers are fairly tame for this clade, but still unusual among our Lowcountry flora. Each flower is an inch long urn with three lobes at the mouth. They’re colored dark-mauve to burgundy over a base of cream-white. These flowers crop up from the soil near the center of each leaf cluster, poking through the leaf litter or staying buried beneath it. There’s usually roughly one flower per leaf. These flowers are pollinated primarily by beetles, as well as ants, flies, and other minute insects. Their method for seed dispersal relies on insects as well, specifically ants. Little-Brown-Jugs seeds have a tiny nugget of fat attached to them that attracts certain species of native ants. The ants then carry the seeds back to their nest, where the seed germinates underground and a new Heartleaf Ginger plant springs forth.
Heartleaf Ginger is in the same genus as Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense). Both species were used by Native Americans and European settlers of Appalachia in folk remedies. Folks even used to flavor candies with Heartleaf Ginger. However, modern medicine has discovered that both species contain aristolochic acid, a trademark of the family Aristolochiaceae. This compound is carcinogenic and causes permanent kidney damage. Suffice it to say, this is an herb best appreciated by eye, and not by taste!
