Chinese boxthorn

Lycium chinense Mill. (Solanaceae), Chinese boxthorn or Chinese wolfberry, is a deciduous, somewhat thorny, scrambling or arching shrub native to eastern Asia, occurring across most provinces of China, the Korean peninsula, Japan and the Russian Far East, and widely naturalised elsewhere. Plants form a tangled mass of slender, drooping, pale grey-brown shoots 1-3 m long, often armed with short axillary spines on older wood. The alternate or fascicled leaves are ovate-lanceolate to elliptic, 2-7 cm long, soft, bright green, with entire margins and a short petiole. Solitary or paired axillary flowers are funnel-shaped, 9-12 mm across, with a five-lobed pale purple to violet corolla and exserted stamens. The fruit is a glossy bright red, ovoid to oblong fleshy berry 7-15 mm long containing many flattened pale seeds and ripening from late summer into autumn. It grows in thickets, hedgerows, river banks, stony slopes and disturbed ground from sea level to 3000 m.