Jim, You should really try A. caulescens as another easy green one. It takes a while to get established, but is fine thereafter. Mine is at the base of a big Japanese maple where little else would grow. There is a border of it at Nikko Temple in Japan that must be 4 feet wide and 500 feet long. Stunning. [getting a bit OT below, geophyte snobs may exit here] I finally took the plunge and planted out some A. splendens a couple of years ago (I'm guessing that's what you meant instead of A. superbum). They were fine last winter's deep snow cover. I'm guessing that Ellen has no problems whatsoever with it. Finally, if you want a fancy Japanese asarum that is both beautiful and bulletproof, try to find Setsu Getsu Ka. I originally got a plant in 1995 at a tiny, no-name nursery out in the rice paddies near Matsuyama in Japan. It was labeled only as '#2', and cost about three times as much as the other asarums I was buying--perhaps $10 at that time. That was because it was one of the fancy green-stemmed, green-flowered classical cultivars. Asiatica later offered one that looks identical as Setsu Getsu Ka, as does Plant Delights. I haven't compared them side-by-side, but I'm pretty sure that #2 is the same plant. I have no idea what the species might be. The flowers are reminiscent of takaoi, but the leaves are larger and better marked. At any rate, #2 has been in the ground here for over ten years, with and without snow, and is very happy growing in pots. The leaves get two to three times larger in the ground. It increases like crazy, much faster than any other Japanese asarum. This is a bit puzzling, as Tony describes Setsu Getsu Ka as 'painfully slow'. I keep planting more and more outside, trying to find a spot where it is unhappy, but it just keeps going and going. And I have given another dozen plants away to friends and plant sales/auctions. Saruma henryi is another winner, isn't it? I was an early adopter of this one, getting plants from a National Arboretum collection around 1990. No problems whatsoever in that time, nice to look at, and not weedy. I'll have to look around for seeds for the BX. --Roy NW of Boston Zone 6 above the snow Zone 9 under the snow