''Tanakaea radicans'', the Japanese foam flower, is a species of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the

Saxifrage family Saxifragaceae is a family of herbaceous perennial flowering plants, within the core eudicot order Saxifragales. The taxonomy of the family has been greatly revised and the scope much reduced in the era of molecular phylogenetic analysis. The fa ...

, and is the sole species in the genus ''Tanakaea''. It is native to central

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

and

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

in Japan, and to southern

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

in south-central China. It is named after the Japanese botanist

Tanaka Yoshio was a Japanese civil servant and naturalist. Born to a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Iida, Shinano Province, Tanaka studied pharmacognosy in his youth with Keisuke Ito. In 1861 he moved to Edo and joined the ''Bansho Shirabesh ...

. It was initially described by

Ludovic Savatier Paul Amedée Ludovic Savatier (19 October 1830 – 27 August 1891) was a French naval doctor and botanist. Savatier was born on the Atlantic island of Oléron, off La Rochelle and Rochefort, in 1830. He studied medicine at the Naval Medical Schoo ...

and

Adrien René Franchet Adrien René Franchet (21 April 1834 in Pezou – 15 February 1900 in Paris) was a French botanist, based at the Paris Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. He is noted for his extensive work describing the flora of China and Japan, base ...

. ''Tanakaea radicans'' propagates via

rhizomes In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

similar to the runners of a

strawberry The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...

. Its preferred habitat in the wild is shady, damp rocky soil.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15233163, from2=Q218930 Saxifragaceae Monotypic Saxifragales genera Saxifragaceae genera Flora of Japan Flora of Sichuan Plants described in 1873 Taxa named by Adrien René Franchet Taxa named by Ludovic Savatier