Named after Dr Keita Shibata (1877-1949) Biochemist, Professor of Botany at Tokyo University (1912-1938); Director of the Iwata Institute of Plant Biochemistry and founder of Acta Phytochemica and founder of plant physiology and plant chemistry research in Japan. Presented reports to Pharmaceutical committee. His brother Yuji Shibata imported a grafted plant of Newton’s Apple tree to Japan and its descendants are now growing in Koishikawa Botanical Gardens in Tokyo.

An orthographic variant of Shibataea kumasaca