(Wall.) Brongn.
Description
Berchemia floribunda is a widely distributed scrambling shrub or woody climber of East and South Asia, recorded from China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Nepal, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Bhutan, with more than six thousand documented occurrences. It grows in forest margins, thickets, scrub and hedgerows from the lowlands into the lower montane zone, clambering over shrubs and small trees by means of its long flexuous branches. In Nepal it descends to warm subtropical foothills, as shown by the collection along the Sabha Khola at about 560 m in May, coinciding with its flowering season.
The plant is a deciduous liana with slender, glabrous, often zigzag branchlets. The leaves are alternate, ovate to elliptic, entire, acute to shortly acuminate at the apex and rounded at the base, with numerous fine, parallel, arching lateral veins that give the lamina a neatly pinnate-veined appearance. The inflorescence is a large, lax terminal panicle of many small flowers, the epithet floribunda referring to their abundance; each flower has five greenish to yellowish triangular petals, a five-lobed calyx and five stamens. The fruit is a small, narrowly ellipsoid drupe, green ripening through red to blue-black, seated on the persistent disk.
Berchemia belongs to the tribe Rhamneae within Rhamnaceae and comprises twining or scandent shrubs of Asia and the Americas distinguished by their many-veined leaves and small drupaceous fruits. The fleshy fruits are dispersed by frugivorous birds, while the climbing habit allows the plant to reach light at forest edges. Berchemia floribunda is locally common and economically minor, its tough stems used in basketry and its roots and fruits in folk medicine. Broadly distributed and tolerant of disturbed habitats, it is of no conservation concern.
Author: (Wall.) Brongn. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 12, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Medan & Schirarend treatment of Rhamnaceae