Japanese name: ゴキヅル（合器蔓） Scientific name:Actinostemma tenerum
[Overview]
A climbing annual growing on sunny waterside sites such as rivers and ponds.
The stem is slender, has 5 ridges, and bears upward-pointing appressed hairs.
It climbs over other objects with tendrils from the leaf axils, and the tendrils usually fork in two.
Leaves are simple and alternate, sometimes palmately 3–5-lobed, triangular-lanceolate, 3–10 cm long, with a pointed tip and a heart-shaped base.
There are hairs on the veins of the leaves and on the petioles.
There are male and female flowers; the male flowers are borne in racemes from the leaf axils, and the female flowers are solitary at the base of the male inflorescence.
The flowers are about 1 cm across and pale yellowish green; the corolla and calyx are each 5-lobed and alternate, so the flower looks as if it had 10 petals.
The lobes of the corolla and calyx are slender and pointed.
There are 5 stamens.
The fruit is a drooping ovoid lidded capsule 1–2 cm long, with small scattered projections on the upper half and none on the lower half.
When ripe, it splits crosswise at the middle, revealing 2 flat, blackish brown seeds.
The seeds hang from the top inside the fruit.
[Notes]
The Japanese name comes from goki (a lidded bowl), because the fruit splits in the middle as if opening a lid.
