The cultivar 'Rosa Zeiten' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

The leaves are winter hardy in warmer climates and change colour in the range of rust brown to brown-red.

Leaves are in a basal dense rosette (wintering under the snow), dark green, which redden by autumn, with an almost rounded blade and a membranous sheath remaining up to two to three years.

The leaf blade is broadly elliptical or almost rounded, rounded or chordate at the base, obtuse or indistinctly dentate, 3–35 cm long, 2.5–30 cm wide, on wide petioles not exceeding the length of the plate, equipped at the base with membranous vaginal stipules .

Flowers are small, regular, lacking bracts, in apical thick paniculately-corymbiform inflorescence, usually two for long reddish leafless peduncle length of 4 cm.

As an ornamental plant, it has been known in culture since the middle of the 18th century, it is used for landscaping, in stone gardens, arrays of shrubs and trees.

For medicinal purposes, rhizomes are used, which are collected by hand, cleaned and washed in cold running water.

Aqueous extracts of rhizome and leaves inside are used for colitis and enterocolitis of a non-infectious nature, tuberculosis, acute and chronic pneumonia, pulmonary haemorrhage, influenza and some other infections, laryngitis, headaches, fevers, articular rheumatism and gastrointestinal diseases.