Cryptotaenia japonicaHassk.

Japanese honewort

WFO wfo-0000628509 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cryptotaenia japonica, photographed by chen ying-hsiao
fig. a chen ying-hsiao, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-08-24 / obs. 152830543

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 11 botanical countries

Regions where Cryptotaenia japonica is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, Kuril Is., Nansei-shoto, Primorye, Sakhalin, Taiwan, Vietnam China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanPrimoryeSakhalinTaiwanVietnam KoreaNansei-shoto
Native distribution of Cryptotaenia japonica, 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
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Kuril Is. KUR
Nansei-shoto NNS
Primorye PRM
Sakhalin SAK
Taiwan TAI
Vietnam VIE ASIA-TROPICAL

Not drawn on the map: Kuril Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 804 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.4 °C 8.2 °C 12.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.4 °C 26.8 °C 30.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,246 mm 3,724 mm 4,557 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 137 mm 219 mm 755 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 804 research-grade observations of Cryptotaenia japonica 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 14 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.

  • Cryptotaenia canadensis f. atropurpurea (Makino) Yonek.
  • Cryptotaenia canadensis f. dissecta (Y.Yabe) Makino
  • Cryptotaenia canadensis f. warabiana (Makino) Yonek.
  • Cryptotaenia canadensis subsp. japonica (Hassk.) Hand.-Mazz.
  • Cryptotaenia canadensis var. japonica (Hassk.) Makino
  • Cryptotaenia japonica f. dissecta (Y.Yabe) H.Hara
  • Cryptotaenia japonica f. japonica
  • Cryptotaenia japonica f. pinnatisecta S.L.Liou
  • Cryptotaenia japonica f. warabiana (Makino) H.Hara
  • Cryptotaenia japonica var. atropurpurea Makino
  • Cryptotaenia japonica var. dissecta Y.Yabe
  • Cryptotaenia japonica var. warabiana Makino
  • Deringa dissecta Koso-Pol.
  • Deringa japonica (Hassk.) Koso-Pol.

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.