Stauntonia hexaphylla

Photo: Philipp Franz von Siebold and Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini — Public domain · source

Survives zone 8 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Unlike most of its Lardizabalaceae relatives, this one is genuinely good eating — a well-known Japanese dessert fruit with sweet, honey-flavored, watery pulp, eaten fresh out of hand or made into jam, jelly and wine.

Hardiness

Zone 8–9

Habit

Vine

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Autumn (pods split)

Mature size

Evergreen twining vine to about 12 m; containerable with hard pruning

Light

Partial — roots shaded, top in sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Subtropical

Native range

South Korea, Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, in warm-temperate coastal and hill forest.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

3–4 yrs

Growth speed

1–3 m/year — fast, evergreen, and needs solid support.

Spacing

300 cm (118 in) apart — about 9 m² (97 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Evergreen, alternate and palmate with three to seven leaflets radiating from a common point on a long stalk, leathery and glossy.

Root system

Vigorous, fibrous and spreading, with stems rooting where they trail along the ground; less aggressively suckering than Akebia but still capable of covering a lot of ground.

Fruit description

Egg-shaped to sausage-shaped purple fruits 5–8 cm long with sweet, translucent white pulp — among the better-flavoured of the family, and grown for fruit in Japan and Korea.

Propagation

Semi-ripe cuttings in summer, or layering — the trailing stems root readily on contact. Seed is slow, best sown fresh, and can take up to 18 months to germinate.

Pollination

⚠ Dioecious, not merely self-incompatible — male and female flowers are on separate plants, so you need one of each sex, and two random seedlings may well be the same sex. (Female plants have occasionally fruited with no male present, so the split may not be absolute, but do not rely on it.) Insect-pollinated.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.