Stauntonia hexaphylla

Stauntonia hexaphylla is a handsome, vigorous evergreen climber from the woodlands of Japan, Korea, and China, grown as much for glossy year-round foliage as for the famous fruit. The palmate leaves are cut into five to seven leathery, dark-green leaflets, held on a strong, twining vine that clothes a support densely from top to bottom. A member of the Lardizabalaceae, Stauntonia counts Akebia, the chocolate vine, and Decaisnea, the blue-sausage tree, as relatives.

The name carries a little history. The genus honors Sir George Leonard Staunton, an eighteenth-century Irish botanist and diplomat, and the epithet hexaphylla means six-leaved, for the usual count of leaflets. In Japan the plant is mube, a fruit long esteemed enough to be offered to the imperial court, and in spring fragrant, waxy, purple-flushed white flowers hang in small clusters and ripen into plump, sausage-shaped purple fruits, sweet and honeyed, eaten fresh across East Asia.

Mube has a second life in traditional East Asian medicine. The fruit was long taken as a diuretic and used against rheumatic complaints, and the fruits, leaves, stems, and roots were all turned to for their analgesic, sedative, and anti-inflammatory reputation, a folk pharmacy that modern laboratories have begun to examine for the triterpene saponins the plant contains. That double character, imperial dessert and country remedy, is common among the useful vines of the region.

In the garden, give Stauntonia hexaphylla a pergola, arbor, fence, or strong trellis in sun or part shade and a moist, well-drained soil, and the vine will climb fast into a dense, evergreen screen. The spring flowers draw bees, and where two plants grow together the fruit sets more heavily. Evergreen, self-clinging by twining stems, and untroubled by heat, mube makes a lush, productive, and unusual alternative to the more familiar evergreen climbers.