Question

Which plant is described by these clues? The genus name is little more than the plant's Japanese name latinised, one of the few East Asian words carried into botanical Latin almost unaltered. The flowers open without a single petal, and what passes for petals is a whorl of three thick, softly coloured {sepals}. Male and female flowers hang on the same drooping {raceme}, a few large females near its base and a crowd of smaller males toward the tip, each male carrying six free {stamens}. Its alternate leaves are divided right to the base into five stalked {leaflets} that radiate from one point like fingers, each blade smooth-edged and dinted at the tip. In March and April the opening flowers throw a scent that people reach for vanilla or warm spice to describe, carrying best on still, mild afternoons. Wild plants belong to Japan, Korea and central and eastern China, scrambling over forest margins, thickets and stream banks at low to middle elevations. By autumn the pollinated flowers have swollen into thick violet pods 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) long that split down one side to show a column of white pulp packed with black seeds. Gardeners often wait years for fruit, because a lone plant crops only sparsely and a second, unrelated individual planted nearby makes all the difference. In Japan the sweet pulp is spooned out as an autumn treat and the faintly bitter rind is stuffed and fried as a vegetable, while in Chinese medicine the woody stem is the herb sold as mu tong. Visitors regularly take it for Virginia creeper on the strength of its five leaflets, until they notice that the leaflets are smooth-edged, that the stems climb by {twining} rather than gripping with pads, and that the spring flowers smell of chocolate.

Accepted Answer

Akebia quinata

Name That Plant #099