A visual guide to spring flowers in East Asia. Clockwise from top right, in Japanese. I added English + Korean and Chinese Mandarin readings below 梅 plum (ume/maehwa/mei) 杏 apricot (anzu/salgu/xing) 李 plum (sumomo/jadu/li) 桃 peach (momo/boksung-a/tao) 櫻 cherry (sakura/beotkkeot/ying) 🎨 mojacookie - ThreadSky

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chowleen.bsky.social • 1 day ago

A visual guide to spring flowers in East Asia. Clockwise from top right, in Japanese. I added English + Korean and Chinese Mandarin readings below

梅 plum (ume/maehwa/mei)
杏 apricot (anzu/salgu/xing)
李 plum (sumomo/jadu/li)
桃 peach (momo/boksung-a/tao)
櫻 cherry (sakura/beotkkeot/ying)

🎨 mojacookie

Comments

roundpebble.bsky.social•8 hours ago

thanks added Japanese+ Korean and Chinese Mandarin readings

chowleen.bsky.social•1 day ago

A point of contention in translation - 梅 (ume) is commonly translated as “plum” in poetry and vernacular usage, but botanically speaking, it is more correctly rendered as “flowering apricot”

adventuresofjoy.bsky.social•1 day ago

love this! i think I’ll do this too!

ricebucket1.bsky.social•1 day ago

(not a translator, but am a sort of botanist) - Do you know why certain plant common names are translated as "flowering ..."? All apricots have quite showy flowers, so why not just "apricot"?

I'm in the US where ume is hard to come by, and have usually substituted apricots.

jasnah.bsky.social•1 day ago

it's Prunus mume, more closely related to Prunus armeniaca than to Prunus domestica but distinct from both. as for why that translation, it's likely b/c they became popular primarily as ornamental trees in the West & that's what the horticultural crowd would refer to them by.

ricebucket1.bsky.social•1 day ago

In California, the horticultural and botany crowds (at least those I'm part of) always just say 'ume' or P. mume. I don't love the 'flowering apricot' translation because the other similarly named plants (e.g. flowering quince) I can think of tend to be inedible relatives of food crops.

zetwitty.bsky.social•1 day ago

📌

gmsprof.bsky.social•1 day ago

Useful. Thanks!

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