Thanks for the post and the question! I think they are similar if not identical. Our records manager would have to check back and find out where the plant came from originally. If it was wild collected, we stick with the current name, but if it came from a nursery, my suspicion would be that it is, in fact, ‘Shiro Bana’.

Cheers,

Riz

Great photos, and nice job with the garden! Are you quite certain that Akebia isn’t ‘Shiro Bana?’ I’ve always differentiated the two by the internal flower parts – ‘Shiro Bana’ has nice all-white flowers like this one, while the examples of ‘Alba’ that I’ve seen have had much more purple in the internal reproductive parts. ‘Shiro Bana’ also seems to be a good deal more common around here, and yours seems to be identical to one I have in my garden that was labeled that way.

Whatcha think?

Tom Roberts