Akebia trifoliata

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Akebia trifoliata, photographed by Se Lena — fig. b Se Lena, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117617792

Akebia trifoliata, photographed by Yoshihiro Tokue — fig. c Yoshihiro Tokue, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 37633520

Akebia trifoliata, photographed by harum.koh — fig. d harum.koh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 35735239

Akebia trifoliata, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. f Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17310956

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 5 botanical countries

Native distribution of Akebia trifoliata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
China North-Central	CHN	ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central	CHC
China Southeast	CHS
Japan	JAP
Taiwan	TAI

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 181 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-5.7 °C	-1.2 °C	3.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	25.2 °C	28.6 °C	30.8 °C
Annual rainfall	1,290 mm	1,483 mm	2,705 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	120 mm	146 mm	369 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 181 research-grade observations of Akebia trifoliata that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 19 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Akebia chaffanjonii H.Lév.
Akebia chingshuiensis T.Shimizu
Akebia clematidifolia Siebold & Zucc.
Akebia clematifolia Siebold & Zucc.
Akebia lobata Decne.
Akebia lobata var. australis Diels
Akebia lobata var. chaffanjonii (H.Lév.) H.Lév.
Akebia lobata var. clematifolia (Siebold & Zucc.) Ito
Akebia lobata var. quercifoliata (Siebold & Zucc.) Ito
Akebia quercifolia Siebold & Zucc.
Akebia sempervirens Nakai
Akebia trifoliata subsp. australis (Diels) T.Shimizu
Akebia trifoliata subsp. trifoliata
Akebia trifoliata var. australis (Diels) Rehder
Akebia trifoliata var. clematifolia (Siebold & Zucc.) Nakai
Akebia trifoliata var. honanensis T.Shimizu
Akebia trifoliata var. integrifolia T.Shimizu
Akebia trifoliata var. litoralis Konta & Katsuy.
Clematis trifoliata Thunb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.