Native to Italy, Sardinia, & Corsica. Widely grown houseplant; naturalized in UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, California, Baja California, & Chile; at least a casual alien (i.e, not definitively established) in Germany, Switzerland, & elsewhere.
Distribution / Verbreitung: in
Europein
North AmericaPictures / BilderOther English names (not proposed):
angel’s tears
artillery plant
bits and pieces
bread and cheese
Corsican carpet
Corsican creeper
Corsican curse
friendship plant
helxine
Irish moss
Japanese moss
paddy’s wig
peace-in-the-home
polly prim
pollyanna vine
Soleirol’s curse
Soleirol’s vitriolTaxonomic citation:
Soleirolia soleirolii (Requien) Dandy, Feddes Repertorium 70: 4. 1965.
Basionym:
Helxine soleirolii Requien, Annales des Sciences Naturelles (Paris) 5: 384. 1825.
Both names honor Captain
Joseph-François Soleirol (1796–1863), French engineer & amateur botanist, who collected plants in Corsica. See:
The Names of Plants by David Gledhill (Cambridge University Press, 2008),
page 355French description of
Helxine soleirolii by Esprit Requien in
Annales des Sciences Naturelles (Paris), volume 5,
page 3853385 - Urticaceae