This week I again choose a purple flower to decorate the reception room in the Smith`s school of Englishスミス英会話 in Fuse, Higashi Osaka東大阪布施. If you have been reading my articles regularly you will know that it is my son`s favorite color.
It`s name is Wavyleaf Sea-lavender or Limonium sinuatum in English英語 and スターチス in Japanese. I find the Japanese name curious because even thought it is a Katakana name, it does not at all resemble the English英語 original name. Reading about the plant I found out on Wikipedia`s Japanese page about the plant that the Japanese common Katakana name originates from the old name “statice”, which was later changed to limonium. In Japanese, it is also know under the name ハナハマサジ.
As I love my son a lot, I like to choose flowers in his favorite color. The two different hues of purple of the wavyleaf sea-lavenderスターチス immediately caught my eye at the flower shop here in Fuse, Higashi-Osaka東大阪布施 so I choose them. Aren`t they wonderful? If I would show them to my son, he probably would not want to give them back to me!
Soon I found out that only the sepals are purple. When buying the plant, the white petals were still hidden inside. At the end of the day I could found out that the flowers themselves where starting to emerge from the protecting sepals! What a surprise! The English Conversation students英会話生徒, who often know much more about flowers than I do, informed me that the small pale yellow flowers will appear all over before blooming out! What a fascinating flower! I believe that we can still enjoy their splendor next week.
If you like to read more about the Limonium sinuatum, you can read the English Wikipedia page about the flower.
For more detailed information, especially if you have a garden and want to cultivate the wavyleaf sea-lavenderスターチス, try this page: http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pda_48c3.html
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