Plants and Flowers in Tokyo & Japanese Culture by Kei Narujima　東京の草花＆つぶやき

Autumn Leaves　紅葉

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The best season for autumn leaves in Tokyo is from late November to early December. Red and yellow leaves are beautiful but the mixture of green, yellow, orange, and red leaves against the blue sky creates stunning views, doesn't it? Many go to famous (and sometimes distant and busy) places to see fall leaves but you can enjoy autumn foliage here and there in Central Tokyo without being disturbed by crowds.

2025/11/24

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2025/11/24

Lespedeza (Bush Clovers)　萩（ハギ）

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Bush clovers are native to East Asia and can be found across Japan, flowering generally from July to September. The term "bush clover" is a kigo, i.e., a seasonal word or phrase associated with a particular season used in traditional forms of Japanese poetry, for autumn, but Lespedeza actually flowers from early summer to autumn (although I found one tree flowering in December in the first three photos).

Bush clovers are known to produce pink flowers but they also have white flowers (Lespedeza buergeri) and some (Lespedeza japonica bailey cv. versicolor) produce pink and white flowers on the same tree.

2025/12/3

Japanese Cornel (Cornus Officinalis)　サンシュユ（山茱萸）

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The Japanese cornel (Cornus officinalis) is native to China, Korea, and Japan and can be found across Japan. The tree produces umbels of bright yellow flowers from March to April and berries that get redder from October to November.

The bright yellow of Japanese cornel flowers is called a "vitamin color" in Japan because it's said to energize people, which I believe is true. In spring, many stop in front of the trees to look at their pretty flowers talking about the joy of spring but surprisingly and sadly, most don't know the Japanese cornel. The Japanese cornel is one of the most underestimated trees because of their blossoming at almost the same time as cherry and Japanese apricot trees.

2025/3/20

2025/3/9

Single-Flowered White Sasanqua Camellia　一重の白い山茶花

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The sasanqua camellia is native to, and can be found across, Japan. It produces flowers from October to December (as opposed to the camellia japonica, which flowers from February to April). The color varies from white to pink and red and so does the layering, single to multi-flowered. The blooms in this post are single-flowered white (pink-edged) and you would relatively easily run into such blooms in Tokyo in not a few places. Single flowered camellia sasanquas may be less gorgeous but are as beautiful as the double flowered ones.

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山茶花は日本原産。秋から冬になるとあちこちで見られます。白、ピンク、赤の花が一重や八重で咲き、色も形も様々です。この記事の山茶花は一重咲きで、八重咲きと比べると地味目ですが、深い緑の中に浮かび上がる白には幽玄の美しさを感じます。

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Burning Bush (Euonymus Alatus)　ニシキギ（錦木）

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The burning bush (Euonymus alatus) is native to China, Korea, and Japan and can be found across Japan. The burning bush autumn leaves are very beautiful but because the bush grows to only 1 to 1.5 meter high, the beauty is often disregarded among maple and other taller trees. But the beauty of the burning bush is not just it. If you are closer to it, you can find small red arils with one to four vivid orange seeds inside.

As the plant's name suggests, its leaves look "burning." The burning bush is named "nishiki gi" in Japanese, which translates into "brocade tree," after such a beautiful red color of the leaves like brocade.

2024/11/22

2024/12/12

2025/11/30

Thorny Olive (Elaeagnus Pungens)　ナワシログミ（苗代茱萸）

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The thorny olive (Elaeagnus pungens) is native to Japan, China, and Korea and can be found across Japan. The plant flowers from October to November and fruits from May to June. The thorny olive is named "nawashiro gumi" in Japanese, which translates into "rice seedbed Elaeagnus," after it fruiting when people prepare rice seedbeds. I've seen the flowers but not the fruits yet.

2025/11/30

Loquat (Eriobotrya Japonica)　枇杷（ビワ）

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The loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) is native to China but now can be found across Japan. The plant produces flowers from November to February and fruits from May to June. The fruits are orange and shaped like a Chinese lute or pipa (枇杷), which is why the plant is called as such, "pipa" in Chinese while "biwa" in Japanese. The same Chinese characters but are not pronounced the same. Although the flowers are plain, the fruits are so orange, and sweet and juicy that the trees in my neighborhood produce many fruits every year but I've never had a chance to taste them.

By the way, loquats always bring back fond memories of my childhood.

When I was a second-grader, I lived in a town in southern Japan where there were many wild Amanatsu orange and loquat trees. One day my baby brother and I decided to go on a loquat picnic - just the two of us. I got up early and prepared lunch boxes, and after breakfast, we left home for a place with many loquat trees a few kilometers away. As soon as we got there, we started picking these orange fruits, and after that, had lunch there while talking about the harvest that day, i.e., about 20 fresh big loquats, and brought them home.

Looking back, however, something is bugging me. Were these loquat trees wild? Might they be planted trees in a loquat farm? I remember a couple of people there staring at us, not saying anything.

Now I'm pretty sure that that was a loquat farm and they were loquat farmers who were kind and generous enough to let local kids pick the loquats they'd grown without saying anything. I no longer remember exactly where that was, but these orange round fruits always remind me of this small adventure.

202511/28

2021/5/27

Creeping Daisy (Leucanthemum Paludosum)　カンシロギク（寒白菊）

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Creeping daisies are native to the western Mediterranean and relatively new to Japan, i.e., imported in the 1960s. Technically they're not chrysanthemums but are in the same family (i.e., Asteraceae) and have a Japanese name "kanshiro giku," which translates into "white chrysanthemum blooming in the cold season." Creeping daisies are generally perennial but in Japan they flower only from December to June and die because they cannot tolerate the extreme heat and high humidity of the Japanese summer. Instead, however, they provide insects with important food sources in winter after almost all flowers are gone.

2025/11/24

White Fragrant Olive (Osmanthus Fragrans)　銀木犀（ギンモクセイ）

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Fragrant olive is native to China and can be found across Japan. The plant produces white and orange flowers in autumn and the flowers are fragrant as suggested by the name although the white one's are less fragrant than the orange one's. In Japan, the white one is called "gin mokusei," which translates to "silver fragrant olive" while the orange one "kin mokusei," translating to "golden fragrant olive."

2025/11/24

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2025/11/24

Green Stink Bug (Glaucias Subpunctatus)　アオツヤカメムシ

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I found a green stink bug (Glaucias subpunctatus) on the stamens of a pink edged white sasanqua flower. It's autumn, so naturally many fallen leaves are on flowers and this green bug looked like a leaf at first. Most stink bugs die in winter but this type overwinters in their adult form in Japan.

Stink bugs are increasing in Japan due to warmer winters and increasing food resources (e.g., cedar and cypress cones) in urban areas, resulting in widespread damage to rice, other crops, and other plants across Japan.

2025/11/19

Two Quinces　木瓜と花梨

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These are all Chinese quinces. The green ones are fruits of Chaenomeles speciosa and the yellow ones are Pseudocydonia sinensis. Both are in the Rosaceae family but they're different plants and so is the hardness of their peel. The yellow one's peel (Pseudocydonia sinensis) is harder than the green one's (Chaenomeles speciosa) although jam made from Pseudocydonia sinensis and Chaenomeles speciosa is both "sour" sweet that some find it not sweet enough and a little astringent.

2025/11/17

Princess Flowers (Pleroma Urvilleanum)　シコンノボタン（紫紺野牡丹）

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Princess flowers (Pleroma urvilleanum) are native to Latin America and produces beautiful purple flowers in autumn in Japan. Its Japanese name is "shikon nobotan," which translates into "navy purple Malabar melastome" after its color. As the name suggests, not only its petals but also the short and long stamens are all purple.

2025/11/16

Purple Woodsorrel (Oxalis Purpurea)　フヨウカタバミ（芙蓉酢漿草）

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Purple woodsorrel (Oxalis purpurea) is native to South Africa. The plant came to Japan in the late 18th century and now can be found across Japan. Purple woodsorrel produces pink and white flowers from April to July in general but when warm from November to March, too. Its Japanese name is "fuyou katabami," which translates into "rose marrow woodsorrel" because of its resemblance to rose marrow.

2025/11/16

Wax-Leaf Privet (Ligustrum Japonicum)　ネズミモチ（鼠糯）

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Wax-leaf privet (Ligustrum japonicum) trees can be found across Japan. They produce flowers from May to June (which I've never seen) and fruits from October to December, which are green at first and turn purplish black. The former half of the tree's Japanese name "nezumi mochi" comes from the fruits. The name translates to "mouse mochi" because the fruits look like mouse droppings and the leaves resemble those of the mochi tree or the elegance female holly (Ilex integra). The fruits of wax-leaf privet (despite them looking like mouse droppings) are used in herbal medicine.

2024/12/29

2025/11/13

Japanese Laurel (Aucuba Japonica)　青木（アオキ）

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Japanese laurel (Aucuba japonica) is native to, and can be found across, Japan. The plant produces small purplish brown flowers from March to May and oval fruits in autumn, which are green at first and then turn bright red beautifully in mid-December. Most of the leaves are deep green while some are variegated.

The name "Aucuba" is derived from one of its Japanese names "aokiba," meaning "blue leaf" because the leaves and stems are "blue" throughout the year. Blue? You think I mistook "green" for "blue"?

I didn't! In Japan, people use "blue" for "green." For example, they say "blue" traffic lights and "blue" apples, instead of "green" lights and "green" apples. This is because Japan used to have only four colors, white, black, red, and blue, and the then "blue" included green. In "The Man'yoshu," the oldest existing collection of waka or Japanese poetry, compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period (710-784), green leaves were described as "blue" leaves. The color green was differentiated from blue in the 10th century.

2024/2/5

2023/12/29

2025/11/10

Henbit Deadnettle (Lamium Amplexicaule)　ホトケノザ（仏の座）

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Henbit deadnettle (Lamium amplexicaule) can be found across Japan. The plant is supposed to produce flowers from March to June but as you can see in these photos, it has flowers throughout the year but summer. The flowers have a unique shape with spots, which plays an important role to attract pollinators, like bees. Its Japanese name means "lotus seat for Buddha." How lovely would it be to sit on it!😊

2025/1/30

2022/11/7

Ginkgo (Ginkgo Biloba)　イチョウ（銀杏）

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The ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), a gymnosperm plant, has male and female trees. The male does not produce flowers but pollen while the female produces fruits from September to November. In Central Tokyo, you can see many ginkgo trees but most of them in the office district are male to prevent people from stepping on the fruits. Ginkgo fruits are so stinky, smelling like something rotten, when raw that nobody wouldn't want to step on them but they're considered one of the autumn delicacies in Japan.

Its leaves turn bright yellow (or golden!) beautifully. According to "The Process of Leaf Color Change," in autumn triggered by shorter days and lower temperatures the leaves stop their food making process. The chlorophyll breaks down, the green colour disappears and the yellow and orange colours become visible. At the same time other chemical changes may occur which form additional colours through the development of red pigments. Some mixtures give rise to reddish and purplish autumn colours such as dogwoods and sumachs, while others give maple its brilliant orange. The autumn foliage of some trees show only yellow colours, whilst others like oaks show only brown. All these colours are the varying amounts of the chlorophyll residue and other pigments in the leaf.

The next question is how? Does the color change happen in all parts of the leaves at the same time or from one part to another? You can see the answer in the last two photos of ginkgo leaves changing yellow from the edge to the middle😊!

2024/11/30

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2025/11/10

Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia Glyptostroboides)　メタセコイア

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Some plants are aesthetically pleasing throughout the year and dawn redwood trees (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) are one of them. Last autumn, their leaves created a gorgeous view (scroll down). In spring, their small cones made me chuckle and the leaves created a magnificent, fresh green view. And yesterday, I found a tree with fruits, which look like matcha chocolates.

The dawn redwood is a living fossil species. They're tall and their leaves look like fern leaves, which explains to me why I feel like I were in the dinosaur era under the trees.

2025/6/6

Ring-Cupped Oak (Quercus Glauca)　アラカシ（粗樫）

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Ring-cupped oak or Japanese blue oak trees (Quercus glauca) can be found almost across Japan. They produce acorns from October to November and the acorns are not only fed on by insects and birds but were eaten by people as a famine food in Japan. Oak trees are usually known for the acorns but ring-cupped oak trees produce beautiful cylindrical flowers (6th and 7th photos) and red shoots (5th photo), which look like the heads of Pteranodon (to me), from April to May.

2025/11/8