Hydrangea in Japan

We are in a rainy season from June to early July every year. For some days, sometimes a week, it keeps raining. The rain makes us feel uncomfortable because of its humidity, but it’s very important to the harvest in autumn simultaneously; no rain in this season ends up no harvest in autumn. The rice farming starts in the middle of this rainy season (and in some shrines, there are some festivals celebrating the young rice). Generally, June is a start for our foods (of course, there are some exceptions based on the type of food).

Besides those agricultural/seasonal meaning, the rainy season in June has attracted people, especially Haiku (Japanese poem) poets. Many poets raised topics which may remind us of rain in June and one of them is Hydrangea. Hydrangea is a native kind of flower in Japan and it blooms mainly in June, so the flower makes us feel that the rainy season has come. However, the most interesting characteristic of the flower is its coloring. Once it blooms, the flower keeps changing its color until it falls.　

Start with yellow-green

Aluminum in the soil is the key substance to change colors of the flower. After it blooms, firstly the color is yellow-green due to its Chlorophyll and it becomes blue when aluminum in the soil dissolves and roots of the follower absorbs the aluminum into its stem, while it becomes pink if aluminum does not dissolve in the soil. The dissolution of aluminum happens when it’s acidic in the soil, while it doesn’t happen when it’s alkaline.  No matter what color the flower has, they end up being pink before it falls (even if it’s blue, it becomes pink at the end) because it accumulates organic acid which makes things pinker.  You can see white hydrangea but this white type is by breed improvements and it remains white until it falls; the natural hydrangea blooms in yellow-green and changes into pink or blue and finally becomes pink.

Acidic soil makes it blue

After the final pinkness, it becomes brown and falls. A famous Haiku poet Kobayashi Issa wrote;

゛紫陽花の　末一色に　なりにけり″

(Now, I've seen hydrangea turns into brown (so I realized the flower is falling and the season is changing)).

The poet focused on how the flower ends its life. This is an example of Japanese's point of view. Namely, Flowers have limited life and live their lives strongly and the inevitable death makes it more beautiful. The death of the flower is sad at the first glance but it means new flower bloom. When the rainy season finishes, summer comes, and hydrangea's blooming will also cease till next year but another flowers in summer will bloom. 

Basic Pink