Species

Wisteria sinensis

Common Name(s)

wisteria

Authority

Wisteria sinensis (Sims) Sweet

Family

Fabaceae

Flora Category

Vascular - Exotic

NVS Species Code

WISSIN

The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.

Structural Class

Dicotyledonous Lianes and Related Trailing Plants

Habitat

Terrestrial. waste places and scrub near cultivated plants.

Features

Deciduous woody climber that can reach up to 30 m in length. Twigs are densely hairy when young, becoming more or less glabrous. Leaves also hairy when young, hairy on undersurface when mature. Compound leaves comprising 8-12 leaflets to 80 mm long in opposite pairs. Inflorescence a large raceme comprising many mauve to deep lilac flowers. Pods rarely produced, 10-15 cm long, can flattened brown seed.

Similar Taxa

Wisteria is very familiar to gardeners. The deciduous foliage and long racemes of lilac pea-like flowers make it very distinctive. Wisteria floribunda is also cultivated - on this species the stems twine clockwise, stems twine anti-clockwise in W. sinensis. W. venusta is also very similar but the most common cultivar is white-flowered and the foliage is much darker when mature.

Flowering

October, November, December, January, February

Flower Colours

Violet / Purple

Year Naturalised

1981

Origin

E. Asia

Reason For Introduction
Ornamental

Reproduction
Mostly vegetative through layering and suckering. Seed set is rare.

Seed
Recorded but rare.

Dispersal
People, garden dumping.

Poisonous plant:
The pods and seeds of this plant are poisonous.


This page last updated on 6 Dec 2010