about Nirin-sou

The photo originally uploaded by Yuichi Momma's photostream in flickr

I'd like to tell you about Nirin-sou (or called wind-flower in English) in the botanical approach today.

This flower is called "Nirin-sou" in Japanese that is one of species in genus of Anemone. The scientific name is anemone flaccida.
As for the characteristic of this plant, two flowers bloom at the same time from one stem.　In other words, the most of this plant grows two flower stalks ( or scapes) from one stem as you can see in the image.

image on left : the place where Nirin-sou grows in colony.

image on right : up-closed image of Nirin-sou. Diameter of this flower is 2 cm at most, and it has five pieces of white sepals which look like petals. This plant has no petal that is another characteristic of this plant.

The flowering time will be end of March to beginning of April in the local area where I live.

Flowering of fairies

The image above has been originally shared by flickr photostream.

The picture was taken in a colony of Katakuri which means dogtooth violet. Several thousand flowers of dogtooth violet bloomed on a slope of hill. Flowering time of the dogtooth violet is nearly same time as cherry blossoms in the local area where I live. So we can enjoy both cherry blossom viewing and dogtooth violet at same time. Each flower of dogtooth violet seems like a small fairy.

Sign of spring

Sign of spring, originally uploaded by photoholic image.

This is called Setsubun-sou in Japanes that is one of species of Ranunculaceae family and an endemic species of Japan.
It is very small flower, the diameter of flower is about 2.0cm from 1.5cm and the height of this plant is 10cm, more or less. You can compare the flower with a honeybee as shown in the image below.
This plant grows in colonies and blooms around middle of February as a sign of early spring.　However, flowering was delayed almost half a month than usual because of the severe cold of this winter.