Blunt-lobe spicebush
Lindera obtusiloba · Lauraceae · 생강나무
How to spot it
Wounded leaves and twigs smell of ginger. Yellow flowers appear in early spring before the leaves.
Look
- Leaves
- Ovate or ovate-round, 5 to 15 cm long and 4 to 13 cm wide, blunt at the tip with a heart-shaped or round base. The upper part is 3 to 5 lobed, but the margin is smooth; hairs are on the veins beneath and on the petiole (1 to 2 cm).
- Flowers
- From early March to early May, before the leaves, yellow flowers form many stalkless umbels. Flower stalks are short and hairy, and the perianth is deeply six-lobed.
- Fruit
- The berry is round, 7 to 8 mm across, ripening from green through yellow or red to black from mid-September to mid-October.
- Bark
- Bark is blackish gray. One-year-old twigs are yellow-green and hairless.
Where it grows
- In Korea
- Native
- Native to
- Also in Japan and China; in Korea found south of Pyeongannam-do and Hamgyeongnam-do.
- Ecology
- Strongly tolerates shade, cold, salt and drought, and grows well even by the sea. Grows well in partly shaded, fertile places such as foothills, valleys, streamsides, boulder fields and rock crevices, and also in oak and pine forests.