Glaucidium palmatum

Glaucidium palmatum, the Japanese wood poppy (Shirane-aoi in Japanese), is the only species in the genus Glaucidium, a group of flowering plants in the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. It grows wild only in northern and eastern Japan, on Hokkaido and in the north-east of Honshu, on mountains close to the Sea of Japan. The plant is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial that reaches about 40 centimetres in height. A rigid stem carries two large palmately lobed leaves at its top, each around 20 centimetres across, with smaller membranous leaves lower down. A single flower, about 8 centimetres across, opens at the stem tip, with four pink to pale purple (rarely white) petal-like sepals, many stamens and two carpels; the fruit is a cluster of follicles. Botanists have sometimes set the genus apart in its own family, Glaucidiaceae, and in the past it was placed in the peony family, Paeoniaceae, but peonies belong to the order Saxifragales and Glaucidium is firmly placed in Ranunculaceae. In cultivation it prefers a cool, moist, sheltered position in partial shade.