Mukdenia rossii Crimson Fans

Mukdenia rossii 'Crimson Fans', also known as Ross's Mukdenia or Aceriphyllum rossii, has beautifully coloured foliage and thrives in shady and moist areas. This small ground cover perennial forms its flowers in winter, while its foliage is still dormant. In spring, panicles of small white-greenish flowers rise above its heavily palmate foliage. This foliage forms a beautiful tuft and turns dark green with stunning purple-orange highlights in summer, then purple in autumn. This mukdenia truly deserves to be used more. It will thrive in any fertile, moist, soil like a shaded rockery, or it can be used as ground cover in a shrub border.

Mukdenia rossii 'Crimson Fans', sometimes marketed under the name 'Karasuba', is a plant of the saxifrage family, native to northern China, including Manchuria, and Korea. This perennial has a large, fleshy, brownish rhizome. It forms a compact herbaceous, open clump 35 cm (14in) tall and 50 cm (20in) wide, composed of deciduous leaves that disappear quite early in late summer. These leaves are initially acidic green, often tinged with bronze and red during bud break. It is the summer heat that changes the foliage coloration, with a gradually invading reddish-purple border that eventually covers the entire leaf in autumn before it disappears. The leaves can be very large, up to 13 cm (5in) in diameter, are strongly lobed and palmate and have an irregularly toothed margin. The flowers emerge in March-April, before the foliage, with thick, reddish, and hairy stems, bearing light panicles 14 cm (6in) long. The rose-greenish and hairy flower buds open into small fleshy, semi-double flowers, with 12 white-greenish petals and 6 brown-pink stamens, followed by fruits called capsules.

Mukdenia rossi Crimson Fans is an ideal plant for damp woodlands, shrub borders, mixed borders, or moist, shady rockeries. It can be paired with hostas, ferns, Japanese anemones, and bleeding hearts, which thrive in similar environments. It will look stunning planted with 'Hakonechloa macra Alboaurea', a small golden grass. Plant at the base of shrubs like hydrangeas and fuchsias, always in moist soil.