Description
(Apios cavaleriei)
This is a perennial, climbing and twining vine with pinnate leaves, which are divided into 3-7 leaflets, each of which is ovate and up to 7cm long by 4cm wide in a leaf up to 25cm long.
The flowers are a light yellowish-green with a red-purple edge to the wing petal. The colouring is variable within limits. Sometimes they are darker or can become more greenish, and the shade of the purple can also vary to become more rosy in some forms. The flowers are held in panicles, in the manner of a Laburnum, and are quite showy. They are typically pea-flower-shaped in appearance and very showy and attractive in my eyes. They are borne from about June through to August. In October, bean-like brown pods about 7-8cm long can follow if fertilisation is a success.
A. fortunei grows from small, starchy tubers which are more elongated and less rounded than the perhaps more well known A. americana and both have been used as foodstuffs. A. fortunei however does not increase underground and need to be brought on from seed. Though formerly considered as something of a ‘famine food’, some species are now grown commercially in Japan this species (also native to eastern China) is varyingly known as Hodo or Hodoimo.
In the garden this likes a rich, humus soil and this should be damp, but well-drained. It appears to be cold hardy here with us, but it has been in western cultivation for such a short time that this is only a suggestion based on limited experience (and an appreciation that it grows to altitudes of 1,000m in the wild), rather than gospel.
First introduced to our lists November 2015
