Flowers have been blooming like crazy all over campus. I've already posted a lot of pictures of cherry blossoms (벚꽃 beotkkot), so I'll just show one more here.
I took the picture from the balcony of A Twosome Place, on the western edge of the SNU campus. There's a little park that runs along the stream that borders campus, with trails that go up into the hills. A lot of the blossoms have fallen, coloring the walkways a dusky pink.[Thanks to comments from Erma, Pangea, and an anonymous poster I assume is Museum Lady, I've updated (April 24, 2008) the flower descriptions below in square brackets.]
Around campus the most common flowers in bloom now are jindallae 진달래, a kind of azalea. They range in color from pink to purple.
[These pink/purple flowers are probably cheoljuk 철죽, royal azalea, as seen here.]
Also present in large numbers are gaenari 개나리, the forsythia or golden bell.
They've peaked already, and are on their way out.
I'll need help with the other flowers. If you know the English or Korean names, please let me know, so I can caption the pictures appropriately.
These little red flowers for the most part haven't bloomed yet, but they look eager to do so.
[The red flowers are yeongsanhong 영산홍, another variety of azalea. I gather that there are many varieties of azaleas with different Korean names; based on the usage I've heard, jindallae seems to me the closest to a generic term for these varieties.]
I like these white flowers a lot, the way they cluster in long cylinders:
[They are jopap namu blossoms 조팝나무꽃, bridal wreath, as described here.]
This is the only tree of this kind I've seen on campus.
[It appears to be a pear or apple tree.]
Finally, these pink flowers look like carnations to me -- but what do I know? Is the carnation a tree?
[Turns out that these are cherry blossoms too -- called gyeop beotkkot 겹벚꽃 (literally 'layered cherry blossom').]I sure am a plant ignoramus!
The red looks like it's also 진달래 (jindallae).
ReplyDeleteThe magnolia tree (목련) is in full bloom here. I don't remember where, but I think there might be some on campus, because I remember my spring in Korea was defined by the blooming of the 개나리, 벚꽃, 목련.
Don't forget to check out the willow (버드나무) grove on campus. It's a pleasant place to sit and eat soft-serve ice cream.
You are so behind the times, Erma! You must mean "soft-serve ice cream on a waffle".
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to delete the above comment, even though it's spam, because it's just too amusing.
ReplyDeleteThe red flower after 진달래(철죽 in my opinion) is 영산홍. The tiny white flowers in group is 조팝나무꽃 (spiraea) and the other white flower looks like pear tree. The last one is 겹벚꽃(cherry) where 겹 means multi-layered.
ReplyDelete진달래, 철죽 and 영산홍 are similar to azalea.
I might be wrong too, so check the following sites.
http://blog.goz.co.kr/lyra25/158
http://leeesann.tistory.com/179
http://www.webweb.co.kr/search/ViewCategoryContent.html?Img_Page=1&CTCode=000000140002000601760078&ConGubun=IMG&Img_PageSize=70&Sort=
The pink tree is most likely a flowering cherry, the kind with double blossoms (which is why it looks so carnationy). The red flower looks like another kind of azalea, has the same flower and leaf shape. The white-blooming tree looks an awful lot like apple or crab apple to me. And I have never before seen the clustering white bush thing, but it certainly is pretty.
ReplyDeleteI am tempted to blog about the Smartphone now, just so I can leave similar spammy comments on here.
Finally, was walking down the street the other day and saw carnations growing in someone's front yard. They were kind of viney and on a mini-trellis for support. But apparently they aren't just bouquet filler anymore!
Thanks for all the help. I've updated the blog entry. I haven't tried to track down the precise scientific names for each variety, so the flower identifications are all still a bit vague, but it's definitely an improvement.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the 'bridal wreath,' 조팝나무꽃 is not a very romantic name. 조 is Foxtail millet, 조팝 is cooked rice (meal) with millet and rice. People like to eat brown rice and rice with mixed grains as a healthy food now. But when ordinary people couldn't afford to have precious white rice without mixing other grains such as barley, bean or millet, this white flower with yellow spots looked like bowls of 조팝. How hungry they must have been!
ReplyDeleteThere is 이팝나무 (fringe tree) (이팝 means cooked white rice) soon to be bloomed.