Cardamine leucantha

Cardamine leucantha is a perennial herb in the Brassicaceae family native to temperate East Asia, occurring in Japan (Hokkaido through Kyushu), Korea, northeastern China, the Russian Far East and parts of Siberia, where it grows in cool deciduous and mixed forests, along stream banks and on shaded forested slopes from lowland to montane elevations. The plant arises from a slender, creeping, scaly rhizome and produces an erect, simple to slightly branched, sparsely pubescent stem 25 to 60 centimetres tall. The alternate leaves are pinnately compound with two to four pairs of lateral leaflets and a larger terminal leaflet; the leaflets are ovate to elliptic, 2 to 8 centimetres long, with serrate or doubly serrate margins, acute apex and short petiolules, the upper leaves sessile and progressively reduced. The terminal inflorescence is an elongate raceme of small but conspicuous white four-petalled flowers; each flower is about 6 to 10 millimetres across, with four obovate white petals notably larger than the sepals, and six tetradynamous stamens. The fruit is a linear, slender, ascending silique 1.5 to 3 centimetres long borne on a spreading pedicel; the seeds are small, brown, smooth and ovoid. Young plants are eaten as a wild green in parts of Japan and Korea.