What is "houttuynia"

Houttuynia \Houttuynia\ n. A genus of plants having only one species; East Asian low-growing plant of wet places.

Syn: genus Houttuynia.

n. Any of the genus ''Houttuynia'' of two species in the Saururaceae native to Southeast Asia.

Houttuynia is a genus of two species in the Saururaceae native to Southeast Asia. One species, H. cordata, is widely cultivated as a culinary herb. The genus was originally described in 1783 by Carl Peter Thunberg when he formally described H. cordata as the only species. It remained a monotypic genus until 2001 when Zheng Yin Zhu and Shi Liang Zhang discovered and described a second species native to China, H. emeiensis.