Pueraria is a genus of 15âÂÂ20 species of legumes native to south, east, and southeast Asia and to New Guinea and northern Australia. The best known member is kudzu, also called Japanese arrowroot. The genus is named after 19th century Swiss botanist Marc Nicolas Puerari.
Plants in the genus are lianas, shrubs, or climbing herbs, usually with large tuberous roots. Typical habitats include seasonally-dry tropical and subtropical forest, rain forest, forest margins, and scrub vegetation, often on limestone outcrops and in rocky areas.
The genus, as traditionally circumscribed, is polyphyletic, with different species being more related to other species in the tribe Phaseoleae. Current research, reproduced below, splits the genus into five clades, one of which defines the current monophyletic genus.
The genus Pueraria is highly polyphyletic; the below list is divided by clade following the result of A.N.Egan & B.Pan (2016). In 2015, the authors validly published their proposal in Phytotaxa. , Kew Plants of the World Online database accepts these names.
Pueraria sensu stricto includes the vast majority of species in the genus. They fall into a single clade sister to or containing Nogra.
The following are not included in the 2016 study due to insufficient material for sequencing. They are accepted by POWO.
The following are not included in Egan et al. 2016 for other reasons, but are accepted by Kew POWO:
The rest of the genus fall into four clades, sorted by distance from the main clade:
The following names are not accepted even before Egan 2016 but have seen valid publication: