Decaisnea Lindl. is a synonym of Tropidia

Tropidia

Tropidia is a genus of more than 30 species of terrestrial, partly saprotrophic orchids distributed from China, Japan through Indonesia....

, an orchid genus.

Decaisnea is a genus of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the family Lardizabalaceae

Lardizabalaceae

Lardizabalaceae is a family of flowering plants.The family has been universally recognized by taxonomists, including the APG II system , which places it in the order Ranunculales, in the clade eudicots....

, native to eastern Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, from China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 west to Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

 and south to Myanmar

Myanmar

Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

.

The genus comprises one or two species, depending on taxonomic

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

 opinion. Decaisnea insignis (Griffith) Hook.f. & Thomson was described from Nepal, and is sometimes restricted to the plants occurring in the Himalaya, with Chinese plants distinguished as Decaisnea fargesii Franchet. The only cited distinction (e.g. Bean 1973, Rushforth 1999) between the plants from the two regions is the fruit colour, yellow-green in D. insignis and bluish in D. fargesii. This is of little significance and the two are now combined under the older name D. insignis by some authors (e.g. Flora of China

Flora of China (journal)

Flora of China is a scientific publication aimed at describing the plants native to China.The is a collaborative scientific effort to publish the first modern English-language account of the approximately 31,000 species of vascular plants of China...

).

They are deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

s or small tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s growing to 5-8 m tall with trunks up to 20 cm diameter. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are pinnate, 60-90 cm long, with 13-25 leaflets, each leaflet 7-15 cm long and 5-10 cm broad. The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are produced in drooping panicle

Panicle

A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes....

s 25-50 cm long, each flower greenish-yellow, 3-6 cm diameter, with six sepals and no petals. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is a soft greenish-yellow to bluish pod-like follicle

Follicle (fruit)

In botany, a follicle is a dry unilocular many-seeded fruit formed from one carpel and dehiscing by the ventral suture in order to release seeds, such as in larkspur, magnolia, banksia, peony and milkweed....

 7-10 cm long and 2-3 cm diameter, filled with an edible transparent glutinous jelly-like pulp containing numerous flat black seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s 1 cm diameter.

Cultivation and uses

Decaisnea is grown as an ornamental plant

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

 for its bold foliage and decorative fruit, bright blue in many cultivated plants, which are sometimes nicknamed "dead man's fingers". Most plants in cultivation derive from Chinese seed and are commonly grown under the name D. fargesii.

Decaisnea belongs to the chocolate vine family. Its range covers the Himalayas to western China. The plants are deciduous shrubs and noted for their showy ornamental edible fruit.
It is not very hard to grow in cooler temperate climates, in a fertile, well-drained soil. They are quite frost hardy, able to tolerate temperatures down to at least -15°C (5°F).
USDA Zones

Hardiness zone

A hardiness zone is a geographically defined area in which a specific category of plant life is capable of growing, as defined by climatic conditions, including its ability to withstand the minimum temperatures of the zone...

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