Calystegia hederaceaWall.

Japanese false bindweed

WFO wfo-0001298469 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Calystegia hederacea, photographed by Zinogre
fig. a Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200732984
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁
fig. b WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195886319
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁
fig. c WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193572919
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by Zinogre
fig. d Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192776161
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. e mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157702149
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by Zinogre
fig. f Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 130458068
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by Zinogre
fig. g Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 129706423
Calystegia hederacea, photographed by Zinogre
fig. h Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 129051190

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 27 botanical countries

Regions where Calystegia hederacea is native: Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Altay, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Qinghai, Tadzhikistan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Assam, Bangladesh, East Himalaya, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, West Himalaya EthiopiaAfghanistanAltayChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanInner MongoliaJapanKazakhstanKhabarovskManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeQinghaiTadzhikistanTibetXinjiangAssamBangladeshEast HimalayaIndiaMyanmarNepalPakistanWest Himalaya Korea
Native distribution of Calystegia hederacea, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Altay ALT
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Kazakhstan KAZ
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Qinghai CHQ
Tadzhikistan TZK
Tibet CHT
Xinjiang CHX
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
West Himalaya WHM
Ethiopia ETH AFRICA

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.

Flowering 118 in flower of 149 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Calystegia hederacea observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 118 of 149 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 430 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.0 °C -1.4 °C 2.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 26.8 °C 29.1 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 553 mm 1,381 mm 1,653 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 10 mm 136 mm 224 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 430 research-grade observations of Calystegia hederacea 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 9 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.

  • Calystegia abyssinica Engl.
  • Calystegia acetosifolia Turcz.
  • Calystegia hederacea var. elongata Liou & Ling
  • Convolvulus acetosifolius Turcz.
  • Convolvulus calystegioides Choisy
  • Convolvulus loureiroi G.Don
  • Convolvulus wallichianus Spreng.
  • Volvulus hederaceus (Wall.) Kuntze
  • Volvulus hederaceus var. pubescens Farw.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.