Houttuynia is a genus of two species native to Southeast Asia in the family Saururaceae. 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 but its validity is still unestablished. The genus was named after Dutch naturalist Martinus Houttuyn.
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