Chimaphila japonica seed

LATIN NAME: Chimaphila japonica

COMMON NAME: Japanese Wintergreen

The Japanese wintergreen is a handsome, low, evergreen, creeping perennial herb of the cool, shady forests, and its fine, oval or lance-shaped, glossy, dark-green, whorled leaves and its few small, white or pink, waxy, bowl-shaped, nodding flowers have made it a treasured and fine plant of the forest floor. It grows as a low, evergreen, creeping perennial herb, reaching up to twenty centimetres or so, with the fine, creeping stems bearing the whorled, oval or lance-shaped, pointed, glossy, dark-green, sharply toothed leaves and, through the summer, the few small, white or pink, waxy, bowl-shaped, nodding flowers, followed by the small, round, dry capsules of the many tiny seeds. It is a species of the flowering plant in the heath family, and it is native to the cool, shady forests of the northern hemisphere, while it is treasured for its fine, glossy, evergreen foliage, and it is known as the Japanese wintergreen.

In the heath family it is the glossy, whorled-leaved wintergreen of the forest floor, a quiet evergreen that carpets the cool, shaded ground.

Scientific Research & Plant Biotechnology

The Japanese wintergreen leaves are a familiar subject in the traditional plant chemistry of the northern lands, and the constituents have been examined by the researchers across the world. The botanists have mapped its place in the heath family and the forest-floor flora, and the ecologists have studied the quiet partnership between its fine roots and the forest-floor fungi, a way of living that the heath family knows well. The plant is best appreciated as a subject of study rather than a casual remedy, and the growers of the woodland garden keep it in their collections for the glossy, evergreen carpet.

Ecological & Economic Value & Wide Applications

In the woodland garden, the Japanese wintergreen is the glossy, evergreen carpet of the cool corner. Its waxy, bowl-shaped flowers feed the small insects, and the whorled, glossy leaves give the forest floor a fine, neat, year-round presence. The traditional use of the northern lands keeps the plant in the old practice, and it grows well in the moist, gritty, leaf-mould-rich ground of the cool, shaded spot. Glossy, evergreen and forest-quiet.

The seeds are many and tiny — scatter them thinly over the surface of pots of moist, gritty, lime-free, leaf-mould-rich soil, press them in gently without covering them, keep the pots in a cool, shaded spot and never let them dry out, and the fine shoots will come up in their own good time.