Ume time
The other night, the full February moon hung low over the city, and if you happened to be standing under a plum tree as I was, (my head in the branches) the mix of moonlight and plum fragrance was intoxicating.
Prunus mume is what the textbooks call this tree -- a type of plum sometimes misnamed "apricot." But the Japanese names are more picturesque: Kenkyou, Shiratakishidare, Ooshuku, Oimoinomama, Benichidori, Kokinran, Osakabeni, Tamagakishidare, Aojiku, Shinonome, and Kagoshimabeni. These translate as See the Surprise, White Waterfall Flowing Down, Nightingale Inn, Just as I Please, Red Plover, Old Gold Brocade, Big Cup, Flowing Over the Shrine Fence, Green Stem, Dawn, and Kagoshima Red.
Following the camellia, the last flower of wintertime, the plum blossom beats the crocus as a harbinger of Spring. From just about St. Valentines' Day to the ides of March, plum festivals are underway throughout Tokyo and everywhere else in Japan. Tokyo must have thousands of plum trees. Any temple or shrine worth its salt has at least one. Yushima Tenjin Shrine hosts the most famous "Ume Matsuri" in town, celebrating each spring since 1355.
By chance, the next day I happened to be standing under the same fragrant "Green Stem" tree while other harbingers of spring -- prospective university students -- milled about waiting for their destiny to be posted. A small blue pickup truck rolled up. Five old uncles quickly unloaded the plywood signboards covered with Test ID Numbers stapled in neat rows. The signboards were put into position and the students crowded closer. A young man spotted his name. His buddies picked him up and tossed him into the air several times, shouting "Washoi!" A girl lowered her head in silent disappointment not finding her number. Mothers called on keitai informing their sons or daughters of their test results. The smiling faces will return in April with the cherry blossoms marking the beginning of their college life.
Many people consider the plum to be the plain sister to the more "beautiful" cherry tree. The cherry blossom has the famous samurai-life-is-brief-sadness to it. But to my mind the plum beats its sister hands down. Cherry petals fall too quickly. They are too flashy. Ostentatious. Scentless. Give me plum blossoms bright in sunshine against a cold blue spring sky or mixed with a touch of moonlight. Plum trees also, of course, provides the "ume" in "ume shu" which tastes as fine as the blossoms smell. And is as intoxicating.
-- mjk
Plum Blossoms
I had not even noticed the plum blossoms until I heard a little girl shout, "Look, mom, it's a popcorn tree!" The first warm spring breeze had unzipped her winter-jacketed energy, so she could run wildly under the plum blossom trees, her mother not even bothering to shout "abunai." Why would she? Spring feels safe; beauty even more so.
The constellation of plum trees which I bike past each morning have been well trimmed by a shape-savvy eye. From a distance, the large bubble-cut of the trees sags and sways as if full of invisible water. They hold their shape with sumptuous clarity.
On the trees still preparing to blossom, the reddish tint of small, straight branches grasps at sunlight and at the air. These new tendrils poke up pert and impatient, their greenish buds ripening in bristling rows pointing up away from the earth.
Some trees hang down their branches with world weary melancholy -- the willow, the cherry, some thick-needled pines. Other trees are brash enough to make no concessions, but sprout upward and optimistic. Plum blossoms are the latter.
Plums give away nothing to the powerful, ordering tricks of nature, but insist on their own direction, their own time. They defy gravity. They blossom just a little too early, often scolded by a late frost, a last snow. But the blossoms hang onto their white longer than any cold snap can last. They are part of spring more than winter, more scitter-scatter than serene.
When the small, white rows pop open too quick to notice, they are like hundreds of child-like fingers which have reached up to the sky to grab a piece of cloud fluff and pull it down for a closer look.
Traditionally, the plum blossoms had more poems dedicated to them than to cherry blossoms, notes a scholar on aesthetics and poetry. He's right surely, as the plums have something of a traditional elegance to them, the stately grace of patterned precision..
But that's just in old paintings, after all. The plum blossoms on the branches poke up like flapping advertising banners for all the renewal that is spring.
-- Michael Pronko
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