Aphananthe aspera is a flowering plant. It is found on slopes and stream banks between 100 and 1600 m. It is native to the Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi

Guangxi

Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...

, Guizhou

Guizhou

' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :...

, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang

Zhejiang

Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...

 provinces of China, and Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

. It also is found in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

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Uses

It is used as an ornamental plant in Chinese classical gardens. Aphananthe aspera is a source of fibre and wood, and has been used for making paper. Leaves gathered in autumn are used as a fine sandpaper for polishing wood and similar materials.http://kougeihin.jp/en/crafts/introduction/stationary/2960?m=pdhttp://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Aphananthe+aspera It is not clear from the sources referred to, whether the effectiveness of the leaves as sandpaper depends on their roughness, or whether they contain abrasive phytolith

Phytolith

Some plants can take up silica in the soil, whereupon it is deposited within different intracellular and extracellular structures of the plant. After these plants decay, silica is redeposited in the soil in the form of phytoliths , which are rigid, microscopic structures of varying sizes and shapes...

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