Poor Flowers! Primrose Jasmine and Field Speedwell 雲南黄梅とオオイヌノフグリはかわいそう😭

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

This is primrose jasmine I found while walking in the neighborhood.

Primrose jasmine 雲南黄梅

This vivid yellow color attracted my attention, but what interested me more is its two Japanese names. One is "雲南黄梅" meaning "Yunnan yellow plum" although this plant doesn't grow in the Yunnan province or is not even a plum. The other "黄梅もどき" is worse, meaning "quasi-yellow plum." How rude to call such a beautiful flower "QUASI-yellow plum"! But that's just the beginning. A comment on my another post about "flower name comparison" shocked me. 

In Japan, large field speedwell is called "large balls of a dog"!!

This is because Japan's indigenous field speedwell was named "balls of a dog" by Tomitaro Makino, a Japanese botanist, due to the similarity in the shapes of the plant fruit and the balls of a dog! This Japanese plant, however, went extinct in the late 19th century after the arrival of another field speedwell from abroad, which is larger than the Japanese one. So the "large" in the plant's name is not about "balls" or a "dog," but the plant itself, i.e., field speedwell which is larger than the original Japanese one!!😆 Source: hana's (in Japanese only)

Another terrible plant name in Japanese is "fart, sxxx vine." But this should make sense because it's skunkvine in English ...

In the Japanese language of flowers, primrose jasmine means "modest beauty," "anticipation" and "blessedness."

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春を感じさせる鮮やかな黄色。梅かと思って札を見たら「雲南黄梅」。「おっ、当たった」と思ったら、梅ではなく「黄梅もどき」とも呼ばれるモクセイ科の花でした。

梅でもない、しかも雲南省で咲いているわけでもない、挙句の果てに「黄梅もどき」。ひどい言われようではありませんか😡

でも世の中にはもっとひどい名前があることを私の花の師匠である rieo さんからのコメントで知りました。先ずはオオイヌノフグリ。ほんとひどい！（訳すのがためらわれました｡｡｡） 英語では「large field speedwell」という素敵な名前がついていますが、和名は読んでの通り。しかもこれ、植物学者の牧野富太郎氏による命名だそうです。出典：hana's

ヘクソカズラ（屁糞葛）は英語でも「skunkvine」と呼ばれるほど臭いそうなのでまっ仕方ないかな｡｡｡ というわけでかわいそうなのは、オオイヌノフグリと黄梅もどきに決定です！

雲南黄梅または黄梅もどきの花言葉は「控えめな美」、「期待」、「恩恵」です。

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