Wisteria sinensis
Poisonous plant
Common name
Wisteria
Family
Fabaceae
Flora category
Vascular – Exotic
Structural class
Lianes & Related Trailing Plants - Dicotyledons
NVS code
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.
WISSIN
Conservation status
Not applicable
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
Life cycle
Mostly vegetative reproduction through layering and suckering. Seed set is recorded but rare. Dispersed by peoploe dumping garden waste.
Year naturalised
1981
Origin
E. Asia
Reason for introduction
Ornamental
Poisonous plant
The pods and seeds of this plant are poisonous.