Cayratia japonica

Cayratia japonica or yabu garashi (scientific name: Cayratia japonica) is a vining perennial of the genus Cayratia in the family Vitaceae. It is distributed throughout Japan and is a tough wildflower that can be found on roadsides, wastelands and urban grasslands. It has a long vine that wraps around trees and fences that it comes into contact with. The leaves are ornate compound leaves with five egg-shaped lobes with pointed tips, and they alternate on the branches. The leaf margins are serrated. The flowers are small in summer on a cymes. The flowers consist of four pale green petals, four pale green stamens with a flower capsule at each end, and one white pistil on top of the nectar-secreting disk. The nectar attracts ants, wasps, and flies. The floral disk is rarely fertilized, but when it is, it turns from orange to pink. The fruit is spherical, light green to shiny black when ripe. The young shoots are boiled and used as a vegetable or in Chinese medicine.

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