''Houttuynia'' is a genus of two species in the

Saururaceae Saururaceae is a plant family comprising four genera and seven species of herbaceous flowering plants native to eastern and southern Asia and North America. The family has been recognised by most taxonomists, and is sometimes known as the "lizard ...

native to

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

. One species, '' H. cordata'', is widely cultivated as a culinary herb. The genus was originally described in 1783 by

Carl Peter Thunberg Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Swedish naturalist and an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus. After studying under Linnaeus at Uppsala Un ...

when he formally described ''H. cordata'' as the only species. It remained a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus until 2001 when Zheng Yin Zhu and Shi Liang Zhang discovered and described a second species native to China, '' H. emeiensis'' but the validity still unestablished.Wu Wei, Zheng Youliang, Chen Li, Wei Yuming, Yan Zehong, and Yang Ruiwu. 2005
PCR-RFLP analysis of cpDNA and mtDNA in the genus ''Houttuynia'' in some areas of China.
''Hereditas'' 142: 24-32. It was named after

Martinus Houttuyn Maarten Houttuyn or Houttuijn (1720 – 2 May 1798) Latinised as Martinus Houttuyn, was a Dutch naturalist. Houttuyn was born in Hoorn, studied medicine in Leiden and moved to Amsterdam in 1753. He published many books on natural history, e.g. ...

References

Piperales genera Saururaceae {{Piperales-stub