  We relate the Mather invariant of diffeomorphisms of the (closed) interval to
their asymptotic distortion. For maps with only parabolic fixed points, we show
that the former is trivial if and only if the latter vanishes. As a
consequence, we obtain that such a diffeomorphism of the interval with no fixed
point in the interior contains the identity in the closure of its C^{1+bv}
conjugacy class if and only if it is the time-1 map of a C^1 vector field. A
corollary of this is that diffeomorphisms that do not arise from vector fields
are undistorted in the whole group of interval interval diffeomorphisms.
Several related results in other regularity classes are obtained, and many open
questions are addressed.
