why won’t this plant die? houttuynia cordata, the chameleon plant
I HAVE KILLED MANY PLANTS in my gardening career, most of them unintentional and many of them regrettable. So why can’t I kill Houttuynia cordata, the so-called chameleon plant, despite years and years of trying?
I bought the plant more than a decade ago, for the showiness of its (then) variegated red, green and yellow foliage and its touted use as a groundcover in moist shade (including plunged right in a pot in water, apparently). Certain that I had acquired a treasure, I was terribly upset when it didn’t return from underground after its first winter with me. Dead, I reported in my newspaper garden column at the time. Gone.
It was another year before the chameleon turned on me again, and resurfaced. Its resurrection was cause for celebration. Not dead, not gone!
I guess you know the rest of the story if you’ve ever grown an invasive: It behaved for a moment or two, charming me thoroughly as if my latest gem, then proceeded to get thuggish (and lose its variegation, reverting to the stronger-willed green version).
Oh, no, I said, not on your life, as it overran pulmonarias and Hylomecon, goldenseal and trilliums at a gallop. Oh, no you don’t. Out came the fork and shovel, and after the seeming bulk was uprooted and sent to the trash, out came the sheets of heavy black plastic, weighted down with stones all summer long, as I tried to bake the remainder to death (called tarping; with clear plastic, it would be called solarizing).
By springtime: not gone, and a year later (by then two years beneath black plastic), still not gone. Four years of this treatment has done nothing but encourage it to travel farther and farther sideways underground.
Even if I wanted to use the herbicide glyphosate to stop it, I could not in this situation: The Houttuynia was growing under a big magnolia with fleshy surface roots, which would have taken up the chemical, too.
I am repeatedly forking out everything beneath there now, bagging and trashing it for fear of spreading snippets of the chameleon’s roots, and even tried turning the area to lawn. Mowing for a decade or so will probably kill whatever re-sprouts, right? Or not. I went back to plastic as of 2015, and dig it twice a year besides, but …
And so I ask you again: Why won’t this plant die? (Oh, and any botched murder attempts to confess?)
I love how long the comments in this post have been active!! We are all in this together. But whew, it’s a tough plant to remove. I bought my house 2.5 years ago in the winter, so I didn’t know what was here. In the spring the chameleon plant started coming up, and I immediately remembered Margaret’s post about it, even though I’d (luckily) never dealt with it before. I went to work on digging it out and sifting through the roots. It took me a solid month or two, but I got to a point where I felt comfortable replanting. Since then, I’ve pulled any that I see pop up, and it’s almost gone completely. However, there is another flowerbed that I’ve been trying to remove it from, and for some reason that one is so much more difficult!! I am determined to get rid of it this year or next. I did it once, I can do it again,right?
Here is what I did exactly: I would dig up a clump of dirt, deeply, which inevitably would be full of chameleon roots. I would flip the clump over and loosen the dirt from the roots, then toss them into my bin to be bagged up for trash. I did that over and over and picked e dry tiny stinky white root I found and got rid of it. An audiobook, a shovel, and determination
I bet it wouldn’t survive a heavy salting of the soil…but neither would anything else. In fact, the soil would be poisoned to plant life for years….but then you might be rid of it, permanently. You could start over again, after everything’s dead, by flooding the salt out of the soil via intensive irrigation, and introducing new organic material. Of course, this would be a very hard-core solution, and would require the most intense of wills to pull off successfully…
Hi Margaret! I was considering planting a hardy ground cover after ripping out as much Houytyunia (or however the heck you spell it) as possible- perhaps some Virginia Creeper… what do you think? Would it be tough enough to take over where the chameleon was growing ??
My experience is that even in a couple years of attacking it in a row before replanting, it still comes back, so I am thinking if there is any hope it will mean leaving the area empty and re-weeding the chameleon plant for more years first.
I planted Houttuynia a few years ago to replace lawn. I also planted wire vine and a few clematis. In the mix I have a Japanese maple tree, Edgeworthia, loropetalum, lilacs, camellias and azaleas. I edged it all with liriope. So far, yes, it has shown up in my back yard, side yard and across the front walkway. I dig it, I pull it but I am still thankful that I do not have to water or mow the old lawn. I have considered painting the leaves with strong white vinegar. It does kill weeds but you have to be careful that it doesn’t kill more than the weeds. It’s pretty when it’s in bloom and I do not have to do much to the front yard. The loropetalum is the runaway. I bought a standard one and have trimmed it back constantly. I bought a miniature version that was supposed to grow to 36″. I hack it back every year but it is 15′ high and about 20′ wide. I have to hack it back again. The clematis grows through it so it’s a real pain to cut back while trying not to destroy the clematis. I’m in zone 8.
This plant has been spreading in a shaded bed for years and has spread to my lawn. I have spent many hours trying to dig it up with no success. even trying to pull them out, they snap off at ground level causing it to come back and spread even more. Do Not Plant it.
I had to pay thousands of dollar to cover it with a thick concrete patio after the entire area was carefully dug out. You do not dare leave a small piece of this behind. I wonder if by now it might have grown under the house and out the other side. I no longer live there.