Very beautiful were the large bushes of hydrangea, their branches weighed down by their burdens of immense heads of bright blue flowers. In some parts of England where there is iron in the soil, hydrangeas in the open ground are blue, but what a poor washed-out blue compared to the intensely deep colour of this Japanese variety, Ajisia Aiyaku, meaning the blue hydrangea. Their great balls of blossom change from a pale yellow green to bright blue, brighter almost than the sky above, and as they fade, they turn to rosy purple, and back again to a dull green, clinging with ungraceful tenacity to life, as though loth or afraid to die, preferring to rot on their stem rather than drop untimely—unlike the blossoms of spring, ever ready to depart life at the call of nature. A more graceful form is Hortensis Shirogaku, with its more loosely formed heads,
AN HYDRANGEA BUSH
never forming a densely packed mass, each individual blossom showing, with the outer petals of a much paler colour in contrast with the deep blue centres. They are moisture-loving plants, as they seem to flourish best on the very brink of the miniature mountain torrents. The garden at Atami known as the Bai-en, celebrated for its early plum blossoms, was gay with great bushes of these shrubs in July; they clothed the banks of the roaring stream, till, as their heads grew heavier, the lower branches were swept by the water.
In the early days of August the hedges and banks in the low country were beginning to look parched and dusty, waiting for the autumn rains, which never fail, and will bring new life and freshness to all the herbage, but not new flowers—the season of wild flowers is nearly gone; though the autumn will bring us the true “lily of the field,” the scarlet Nerine japonica—a lily of the field, as it is only growing along the edges of the rice patches on neglected banks or nestling among the grey stone tombs of some forgotten graveyard, that you will ever see these lilies. Never in any garden however ill kept, never in any house, and never used as any form of decoration did I see this lily; for are they not the “death flower,” the flower of ill omen, or sometimes the “equinox flower,” also suggestive of a season full of death and decay. Nerine or Lycoris japonica, or the spider lily—its name seems difficult to determine—made the land gay in the fading year, gorgeous splashes of colour against the ripening rice, its fringed heads rising leafless from the soil, sometimes in scattered tufts, and sometimes great banks closely covered with their flaunting heads. I felt Japan must indeed be rich in flower treasures for such a one to be overlooked and uncared for. Perhaps in the South of England it might find a home—a resting-place where it would be treasured, not destroyed; at the foot of a grey stone wall a few tufts of this brilliant lily would be a “thing of beauty,” though not “a joy for ever.”
By November the flower year is over; the last chrysanthemum pots are being hurried under their temporary shelters, away from the danger of the early frost, which any night may turn the country into a blaze of scarlet and gold. Not only the maples will help the year to die in splendour, for so many other trees have as great a variety of colour, though perhaps not quite so brilliant, and the dark leaves of the tulip-trees will presently turn to a sheet of gold, the larch will be shedding its pale yellow spines, while the Japanese oak, Shira Kashi, with its ruddy colour will help to relieve the solemn everlasting green of the pines and cryptomerias which clothe the hills. The ripened rice is being quickly stored, and only the grasses and foliage of herbaceous plants are left to give a note of colour to the fields and higher moorland; the tall Eulalia japonica, waving in the wind, clothes the golden hills, but will soon be beaten down by the winter snows. So in a blaze of glory the year ends in this Land of Flowers.
CHAPTER VII
PLUM BLOSSOM
In Japan the flower year begins earlier than in Europe, and while the snow is still lying deep on the ground in the northern provinces, in warm and sheltered districts the Ume or plum blossom will clothe the trees with flowers as white as the snow. But in the country round Kyoto or Tokyo it is not until the end of February or the first days of March that the pale pink buds of the plum blossoms will be opening, and there will come a whisper through the air that in a few days the beloved ume-no-hana will be in all its glory. The plum is one of the favourite, perhaps the favourite tree of the Japanese, so in early March, when the sunny days will remind us that spring is coming, though the cruel frosts and snow showers at night will warn us that winter is not yet gone, every passer-by seems to be talking of ume, discussing