Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002
A long letter came from my younger sister, Mitsuko, in which she wrote:
"On my desk is a lovely Adonis. While I was looking at it today, I couldn't help remembering our hometown. We often walked around the graveyard searching for violets and Adonises, remember?"
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From "Romaji Diary" by Takuboku Ishikawa (1886-1912),
translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda
(Charles E. Tuttle) |
This cheerful Japanese alpine is a harbinger of spring. Its golden-yellow flowers, which often break through snow, have made it a symbol of the new year. The Japanese name, fukujuso, means "plant of joy and fortune," but the English name relates to the handsome youth Adonis who, according to Greek legend, was killed by a wild boar. When the goddess Aphrodite wept over his fate, her teardrops formed the flowers of the red Mediterranean anemone. As you may guess from its feathery leaves, the Adonis amurensis belongs to the botanical family Ranunculaceae, which includes buttercups and anemones.
