Japanese name: リュウキュウボタンヅル（琉球牡丹蔓） Scientific name:Clematis javana
[Overview]
A summer-green climbing subshrub or woody plant found at sunny forest edges and roadsides.
The stems are purplish brown and hairy.
When the leaf stalks and leaflet stalks touch something to coil around, they elongate and twine around it.
The leaves are opposite and once ternately compound, but overseas plants are said to include some with twice ternately compound leaves or odd-pinnately compound leaves with 3–9 leaflets.
The leaflets are ovate, 2–6 cm long and 1.5–5.5 cm wide, shallowly 3-lobed, with coarse serrations on the margins.
On the leaf surface the veins are sunken.
Paniculate cymes arise at the branch tips and leaf axils, bearing many upward-facing flowers.
The flowers are white and 1.5 cm across; they have no petals and have 4 petal-like sepals.
The sepals are narrowly obovate and densely hairy on the outside.
The many stamens are conspicuous.
The fruit is an achene 2 mm long.
The style of the pistil remains on the fruit, elongating to 2.5–3 cm, and becomes feathery with dense hairs.
