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Plum blossoms start blooming from the last part of January every year, but this year the blossoms hardly began to bloom even in March. I thought because it got very cold at the time of blooming, but someone said because the plum trees were in the state of dehydration due to the excessive heat of the last summer. However, I finally found that the plum blossoms came into bloom in mid-March.
Well, I report the first flower news of this year, plum blossoms, below.
1. Suigetsu Park
Suigetsu Park is in Ikeda City, Osaka Prefecture, and has an area of about 4 hectares. When you get off at Ishibashi Handai-mae Station on Hankyu Railway and walk for about 15 minutes, you can reach it. You can also use a bus. The park is famous for various flowers such as cherry blossoms and irises in addition to the plum blossoms, and many people go to see the flowers there at each flowering time. About 250 plum trees are planted in the park, in which there are both regular plum trees extending their branches sideways or upward and weeping plum trees. Every year, white and red flowers come out in February. We went there on March the first; however, only about 10% of buds were opened, as shown in the photos below. Nevertheless, the day we went there was warm and we could see white-eye on the trees bearing flowers.
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A lot of Buds
Plum Garden
Weeping Plum Trees with Buds
White Blossoms
White Eye
On a High Branch
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Buds Just Ready to Burst
Fine Weather
Red Blossom
Pink Blossom
Bulbul
2. Aodani Plum Farm
Aodani Area in Joyo City of Kyoto Prefecture has a plum farm in which about 10,000 plum trees are planted in an area about 20 hectares, and has been known from long ago as a place of interest for plum blossoms. The plum trees planted there are not for appreciation but for producing plum products such as plum liquor and umeboshi (pickled dried plum). The kind of many plum trees planted there is “Joshuhaku” whose flower is white and small and whose fruit is big. The trees are trimmed so that their heights are low in order to easily perform works such as harvest. I visited there on March 9th and that day was the last day of the plum festival held every year, but the flowers just started blooming. “Unryubai” is a name of a Japanese ancient plum.
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Joshuhaku
Venue for Plum Festival
Plum Blossoms in Venue
Low-Trimmed Plum Trees
White Blossoms
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Unryubai
Plum Blossoms in Venue
Plum Processing Plant
Pimk Blossoms
3. Plum Garden in Osaka Castle Park
The plum garden opened in 1974 and has an area of about 1.7 hectares, in which 105 kinds among 1245 plum trees produce flowers successively from January to March every year. I went there on March 11th. Early-blooming plum trees still had some flowers and middle-blooming trees were in full bloom, and so the garden was brilliant and cheerful. The day I went was unfortunately rainy but, for that reason, the garden wasn’t crowded.
4. Tsunashiki Tenmangu Shrine
Tsunashiki Tenmangu Shrine is in Suma in Kobe and is familiar to local people as Tenjin-sama of Suma, it has been said that Sugawara-no-Michizane stopped by in the middle of trip to Dazaifu. In the precincts, which are not so large, about 30 kinds among 120 plum trees are planted. We went there on March 14th, that day being fine without clouds and with a comfortable wind blowing. The flowering of “Benitoji,” which usually blooms in January to February every year, was delayed and it was overlapping with the flowering of weeping plum trees, which begin to bloom after the flowering of Benitoji, and so we could see that both kinds of plum trees were in full bloom.
What do you think about the plum blossoms? As you know, we Japanese like blossom viewing very much, particularly cherry-blossom viewing, but we also like plum-blossom viewing. We can enjoy the plum blossoms for a longer time than the cherry blossoms.
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