Wakame
edible seaweed
Wakame (Undaria pinnatifida) is a species of kelp native to cold, temperate coasts of the northwest Pacific Ocean. As an edible seaweed, it has a subtly sweet, but distinctive and strong flavour and satiny texture. It is most often served in soups and salads.
Wakame has long been collected for food in East Asia, and sea farmers in Japan have cultivated wakame since the eighth century (Nara period).
Although native to cold, temperate coastal areas of Japan, Korea, China, and Russia, it has established itself in temperate regions around the world, including New Zealand, the United States, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Australia and Mexico. As of 2018, the Invasive Species Specialist Group has listed the species on its list of 100 worst globally invasive species.
Wakame, as with all other kelps and brown algae, is plant-like in appearance, but is unrelated to true plants, being, instead, a photosynthetic, multicellular stramenopile protist of the SAR supergroup.
Names
The primary common name is derived from the Japanese name wakame (ワカメ, わかめ, 若布, 和布).
In English, it can also be called sea mustard.
In Chinese, it is called qúndài cài (裙带菜) or hǎidài yá (海帶芽).
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The phrase “edible seaweed” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q864682. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wakame” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.