Hai Feng Teng

Piper kadsura is a woody climbing vine of the Piperaceae family, climbing by adventitious roots to 5 m or more on tree trunks and rocks in subtropical forests of southern China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The stems are slender, jointed at swollen nodes, greenish when young and becoming greyish brown with age, with a characteristic peppery aroma when broken. Leaves are alternate, leathery, ovate to broadly ovate, 6 to 12 cm long, with five to seven prominent palmate basal veins and a cordate to rounded base. The plant is dioecious; minute flowers lack a perianth and are densely packed in pendulous cylindrical spikes 3 to 12 cm long opposite the leaves. The fruit is a small globose drupe about 3 to 4 mm in diameter that ripens red.