Epimedium stellulatum Wudang Star - Barrenwort

Epimedium stellutatum Wudang Star is a beautiful flower collected from Wudang Mountain in China, quite different from the forms usually cultivated in our gardens. This Epimedium is a delightful little groundcover plant that has very beautiful evergreen foliage.  This is shiny green, often tinged with bronze in spring and nicely coloured in autumn. Its spring flowering is in the form of a mist of flowers that resemble tiny white columbines with prominent yellow stamens. Its creeping habit makes it perfect groundcover for shade or semi-shade, on the edge of woodland or in a cool rockery.

Belonging to the family Berberidaceae, Epimedium stellutatum Wudang Star is a rhizomatous plant that sometimes takes a little time to establish, but eventually forms beautiful persistent carpets with a loose clumping habit. Its evergreen foliage is composed of heart-shaped leaves with fine teeth, bronze upon emergence, often edged with pink-bronze. They then take on a dark green colour in summer, and have a very shiny appearance. With the cold weather, the foliage takes on a bronze colour again. It produces delicate small bicolored flowers in spring (generally from March to April), of unique shape. Perched on graceful and flexible stems, they are composed of 4 white petals with long spurs, surrounding long pale yellow stamens.  Its growth will be faster and more vigorous in humus-rich and moist soil, but it also adapts to drier conditions.

Epimedium stellutatum Wudang Star thrives in cool shade and tolerates the root competition of other plants as long as the soil is not too dry. A plant for light woodland, it is hardy down to -15°C (5°F) and particularly appreciates humus-rich soils, but adapts to almost all ordinary soils. The 'Wudang Star' Epimedium is a plant to effectively cover and flower shaded areas, accompanied by astilbes, Arisaema, ferns, hostas, foxgloves and candelabra primroses, and sweet woodruff, it will compose a superb mass of light planting, in damp soil.