Huai Hua

Styphnolobium japonicum, the Japanese pagoda tree or Chinese scholar tree (formerly Sophora japonica), is a deciduous tree in the Fabaceae, native to China and Korea and long cultivated throughout temperate East Asia. It grows 10 to 25 meters tall, with a broadly rounded crown, dark grey to brown bark that becomes deeply furrowed with age, and smooth, slightly glaucous green young twigs. The pinnately compound leaves are 15 to 25 cm long, bearing 7 to 17 ovate to ovate-lanceolate leaflets 2.5 to 6 cm long, dark green and glabrous above, paler and finely pubescent beneath. The inflorescence is a large, terminal panicle 15 to 30 cm long, appearing in late summer and bearing many fragrant, papilionaceous, creamy-white to pale yellow flowers about 1 to 1.5 cm long. The fruit is an unusual, fleshy, indehiscent, somewhat moniliform pod 2.5 to 8 cm long with constrictions between the seeds, green at first then drying to brown. The dried unopened flower bud (Huai Hua Mi) and fruit (Huai Jiao) are both used medicinally.