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The "Itabi-kazura" (Ficus nipponica) belongs to Moraceae (the Mulberry family). It is an evergreen woody vine that is native from Fukushima-Niigata Prefecture of Honshu south to Shikoku, Kyushu in Japan, as well as Taiwan, the southern Korean Peninsula and China. This vine climbs up adjacent trees or cliffs by the aerial roots which borne at the stems. The leaves are oblong to lanceolate, and arraged in opposite. The flower bloated sacs which resemble to the Fig come in June and July. The fruits are utricles, ripen in fall to winter. In Taiwanese Chinese, it is called "珍珠蓮", and "白背爬藤榕" (bai bei pa teng rong).
In Korean, it's called "mo-ram" (모람). Although there are no records of its etymology in the exact form of the ancient language, there is a theory that it is a dialectal variation of "mo-mil" (buckwheat: 모밀) + "na-mu" (tree: 나무), based on the fact that the tree's leaves resemble those of buckwheat. Incidentally, "mo-mil" (모밀 is a dialectal form of the standard Korean word "me-mil" (메밀).
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