Colt's foot or butterbur, Petasites japonicus or hybridus. (if variegated, most likely the japonicus). It's soil moisture that encourages its rampant spread - can be just as aggressive in shade as it is in sun if adequate soil moisture is present.

Hi gardengal48. Do you use Colts foot for this plant? We use that name for Tussilago farfara. We get Petasites petasites wild here and that's known as Butterbur. Common names are so variable.

Around here the name sweet colt's foot is used for our native Petasites frigidus and plain old colt's foot for Tussilago. At least in NY P. hybridus is usually called purple butter-bur.

I just call it petasites :-) I believe sweet coltsfoot is the "proper" common name to distinguish it from the tussilago and I think butterbur applies to anything in the Petasites genus.

IME, this plant spreads like a house afire regardless of where located. Plant with caution is my advice unless you have plenty of room.

I call it fuki - a Japanese common name. Otherwise I have seen giant Japanese butterbur given.

I like fuki a lot better.

Thank you all. I had not a clue, but now I will look it up.

I looked it up on the Internet, and found that it is indeed a petasites- fuki. I'm going to read more about it now, to make sure it doesn't take over my yard.

Thanks again!