These are spectacular architectural plants, great for cool, shady, damp places. In spring they send up their stems from spreading clumps, from which leaves, often bronze at first, unfurl in a range of interesting shapes - pinnate or palmate in the case of rodgersias, a single large round leaf in the closely related Astilboides. The flowers are tiny, massed on tall plumes, rather like those of the related astilbes, white or pink. And then, for good measure, the leaves in most cases go a rich bronze colour again in autumn.

Rodgersia sambucifolia has elder-like leaves, as its name indicates. Small, starry, creamy or pink, petalless flowers are produced in dense, fluffy, panicles with arched tips.