Home / Plants / Grow / Wild Ginger

Wild Ginger

Asarum canadensis (accepted: Asarum canadense) · Aristolochiaceae · all Asarum records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; Michigan / Great Lakes; northeastern Minnesota
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 5 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · Official scoped edition
- Northeastern Minnesota (MN footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2017-01-01
  Dovetail applies the UF/IFAS flammability key to northeastern Minnesota natives and publishes placement for 38 exact source owners. FireApproved exposes those rows only as northeastern Minnesota regional context and preserves the 3-to-30-foot versus beyond-30-foot source placement.
Firewise Landscaping Plants (Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia editions) · Official scoped edition
- MD; partial normalized coverage · 2015-01-08
  Maryland Forest Service says the list contains plants that can be grown in Maryland and identifies Maryland natives. FireApproved publishes 169 exact source owners from the 180 printed rows; an unrepresentable form and duplicate-owner rows are not broadened. The list calls itself non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every Maryland site.
- NJ; partial normalized coverage
  New Jersey DEP publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in New Jersey and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and does not establish suitability for every New Jersey site or override the Pinelands Commission's separate placement and fuel-break rules.
- WV; partial normalized coverage · 2026-08-26
  West Virginia Division of Forestry publishes a state edition saying the listed plants can be grown in West Virginia and are relatively resistant to fire. Its same 180 printed taxon occurrences map to the 169 conservative owners already normalized for the template family. The list is non-comprehensive and provides no comparative or site-specific rating.
Wildfire-resistant Landscape Plants for Michigan (Extension Bulletin E2948) · Official scoped edition
- MI; partial normalized coverage · 2007-01-01
  Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E2948 is explicitly a list of wildfire-resistant landscape plants for Michigan and includes a Michigan-native field. FireApproved publishes 221 exact GBIF owners from 226 represented source rows and holds 15 complex or non-exact rows. This dated publication scope is not a current site-suitability determination.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range: No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established: No introduced or established row is normalized; that does not prove native status.
USDA hardiness: 2 applicable cited hardiness statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each complete source row.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: No ecological invasive report is normalized; that does not prove noninvasiveness.
Broader regional context: Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context: Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Wild Ginger (Asarum canadensis) — Photo: (c) Mason Heberling, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: groundcover
USDA hardiness: Applicable source statements overlap but have different boundaries; compare each source
Light: Part sun
Water need: high
Grows in: AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL +27
Rated in: Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia; Michigan / Great Lakes; northeastern Minnesota
Family: Aristolochiaceae
Evidence: 3 cited sources

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · record table-2-row-37 · 2017 · as of 2026-08-26

4–8 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Asarum canadensis · exact match.

Source location: Table 2 row 37, Hardiness Zones column.
Wildfire-resistant Landscape Plants for Michigan (Extension Bulletin E2948) · record groundcover:Asarum canadense · New, January 2007 · as of 2026-08-26

3–7 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Asarum canadense · accepted name match.

Source location: Table 1, groundcover row.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)
Firewise Landscaping Plants: Herbaceous Annuals and Perennials [Maryland Firewise plant-form tables] (with its recommendation)

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · ITIS

Asarum canadensis (Wild Ginger). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/asarum-canadensis/. Last verified 2026-08-23.