Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) is a 10 to 15 cm tall spring perennial that flowers in March and April, while the trees above it are still bare. It settles well into a shady border, and two things decide whether you succeed: where the plant comes from, and how you treat the seed.
A wild plant in Europe, a garden plant in Britain
Hepatica is not a British native. Kew's Plants of the World Online gives its native range as continental Europe, from Spain and France through central Europe and the Balkans and on into Siberia, and records Great Britain and Belgium only as introductions. Anything you meet growing outdoors here is a garden plant or a garden escape, so there is no native colony to collect from in the first place.
Across the native range the picture is different, and in several countries the wild plant is protected by law. In Germany the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation lists it as besonders geschützt, specially protected, which makes it an offence to take wild plants of the species from the wild or to damage them or their sites. In France it has no national protection, but it sits on the regional protected species lists for Île-de-France, Haute-Normandie and Franche-Comté. The rule for a gardener comes out the same everywhere: buy plants raised in a nursery, and leave wild colonies where they are. If you garden or walk outside the UK, check what applies locally before you pick anything.
Buying plants and setting them out
Nurseries offer hepatica mainly in spring, while it is in flower and easy to identify. Ask whether the stock was propagated at the nursery, since plants lifted from the wild cannot legally be sold in the countries where the species is protected.
Plant in groups of 5 to 7 with 20 to 25 cm between plants. Hepatica spreads too slowly to fill a gap on its own, so the group you plant is close to the group you will still have in a few years. More plants for shade sit among our perennials.
The seed is short lived and has to be sown fresh
This is where hepatica parts company with almost everything else you sow. The seed does not tolerate drying out. Seed that has sat on a shelf over winter germinates poorly or not at all, and that is why hepatica is almost never sold as packet seed.
The reason sits inside the seed. When the seed ripens, from late May into June, the embryo is still very small and unfinished. It has to grow to full size in the soil before the root can break out, and that takes two weather periods in the right order. First a warm, moist spell through the summer, during which the embryo completes its development. Then a cold period of 4 to 8 weeks at around 0 to 5 degrees over the winter, which releases the block that remains. Only when the soil reaches about 10 degrees in spring does the root appear.
Sow fresh seed in early summer and the first seedlings come up the following spring. Some sit out another summer and winter and germinate only in the second spring, so do not empty the seed tray after one season. Compare that with anemones, which go in as tubers and flower the same year.
How to sow fresh hepatica seed
Collect in late May or June: gather the fruits when they come away at a light touch. Wait much longer and the ants will have taken them.
Sow the same day: do not leave the seed to dry on a plate. Sow within a day of collecting.
Mix the right compost: seed compost with a third grit or coarse sand and a pinch of lime gives the open, limy mix the seed wants.
Cover thinly: 0.5 to 1 cm of compost over the seed is enough.
Stand the pot outside in shade: the seed needs summer warmth and then winter cold, in that order, just as it would get in a wood. The principle is the same as in winter sowing, except that you sow in early summer instead of autumn.
Keep the pot evenly moist all year: if it dries out once during the summer, the sowing is lost.
Pot on gently: at two or three true leaves, move the seedlings into their own pots and keep them sheltered through the first winter. Plant out after the spring frosts.
Ants spread the seed for you
After flowering, hepatica bends its flower stalks down towards the ground and sets the fruits close to the soil surface. Each small nut like seed carries a fatty appendage called an elaiosome. Ants carry the seed home to the nest, eat the elaiosome and throw the undamaged seed out on the waste heap, where it lands in loose, nutrient rich soil.
Ants in the border are an asset where hepatica grows. They only carry short distances, though, so a group widens slowly and stays near the parent plant. For hepatica in other parts of the garden, you plant it there yourself.
Limy, humus rich soil in part shade
Hepatica indicates lime. Where it grows wild the ground is limy, and that is what it wants in the garden too. Aim for humus rich soil with a pH between 6.5 and 7.5. On acid soil, work lime or limestone grit into the planting hole and top with leaf mould.
The position should be part shade. In the wild the species grows both in broadleaved woodland and in herb rich spruce forest, but in a garden a deciduous tree is the better choice, because the canopy lets the spring light through before it opens. A maple, an oak, a hazel or an apple tree all work. Snowdrops do well under the same tree.
Flowering comes before the leaves
Hepatica flowers in March and April, while the tree above it is still bare. That is the point of the timing: the plant gets to flower, be pollinated and set seed before the canopy shuts out the light in late May.
It also decides where you plant. A spot that lies in deep shade in July can be sunny in April, and it is the April light that counts. Walk under the tree on a bright day in mid April and see where the sun reaches the ground. That is where the plants go.
The same logic runs through the rest of the spring display. Snowdrop bulbs and other things planted in September and October sit among our bulbs and tubers.
Care through the year
Leaves over winter: the three lobed leaves are leathery and stay green all winter. They photosynthesise in mild weather and shelter the buds under the snow. Never cut them off in autumn.
Spring tidy: cut away the old, worn leaves in late February or early March, just before the buds open. New leaves follow during or after flowering.
Watering: keep the soil evenly moist, especially through a dry early summer. A newly planted hepatica needs water for its whole first season.
Feeding: a 2 to 3 cm layer of leaf mould in October is enough. Mineral fertiliser is not needed.
Weeds: weed by hand and do not hoe. The roots sit shallow and are easily damaged.
Hepatica does not take being moved
Hepatica establishes slowly and the roots suffer from disturbance. A plant that is moved can stand still for a couple of years, or never come back at all. Settle the position before you plant.
The same goes for division. If you have to split a clump, do it in spring around flowering time, and put the pieces straight into their new position without a spell in a pot. Expect several years before a seedling flowers. In return, an established clump stays in the same place for decades.
Author: Emma Vogiatzi
Fact-checked by Erik Hoekstra
Last updated 2026-09-03