Rhamnus yoshinoi ("Kibinokuromemodoki")

Japanese name: キビノクロウメモドキ （吉備黒梅擬）
Scientific name: Rhamnus yoshinoi

A deciduous shrub or small tree growing on limestone ground, in sunny rocky places and in secondary forests.
It is dioecious.
The branches are hairless, glossy and purplish brown, and the tips of the long shoots become thorns.
The leaves are simple, alternate and sometimes somewhat opposite, obovate-oblong, 3–8 cm long and 2–4 cm wide, with a somewhat tail-like pointed tip and fine serrations on the margin.
There are 4–5 pairs of lateral veins; the upper surface of the leaf has sparse appressed hairs, and the underside has hairs on the veins and in the vein axils.
The leaves on long shoots are often alternate.
The petiole is 5–20 mm.
Cymes arise near the base of long shoots and on short shoots.
The pedicels of the female flowers are long, 9–13 mm.
The flowers are small, yellowish green and 4-petaled, and the sepals are lanceolate and curve back when the flower opens.
The fruit is obovate-spherical, 5–6 mm across, ripening black, with a fruit stalk of 10–18 mm.
It can be distinguished from Kuro-umemodoki, which has gray branches, somewhat opposite leaves on the long shoots, triangular sepals, and short pedicels of 4–6 mm on the female flowers.

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