April 3, 2007

Nishi Tama Area (April 4th)


Viola violacea (Shihai Sumire)
(The first one I found... 最初に見つけた一輪。)

Today I finally went to the spot, which I had been researching about since last weekend using the Internet, in order to find some Viola violacea (Shihai Sumire). This violet is pretty common in the western side of Japan, but it is fairly rare to be found in the Kanto area including Tokyo. So, I don't specify the place I went to today to avoid some bad guys from stealing it. I'll just say it is somewhere in the western side of Tama area.
As soon as I started the trail, I found the first one. It is so tiny lovely one. Much smaller than most of the violets. After that one, I couldn't find any for a while and started to give up, then I encountered flock of chickadees, so I stopped for a while and happened to look back the trail I came from...then, ta-dah! I found another one, and more and more... I was so excited and took bunch of pictures. Through this 8 km or so trail, I found so many Viola violacea (Shihai Sumire) flowers. I really fell in love with this lovely violet.

今日は、ネットで調べていたポイントへ、シハイスミレを探しに出かけてきました。想像以上に華奢なスミレで、その愛らしさに早くも虜になってしまいました。


Compare with the size of a petal of cherry... It is so tiny.
桜の花びらと比べてみてください。なんて小さなスミレでしょう。


The back of the leaves is purplish. (This leaf was moved by me for taking picture, so it was not pointing up like this naturally.)
葉っぱの裏は紫色を帯びています。(注:この葉っぱは自分が動かして撮影したので、マキノスミレのように上を向いているわけではありません。)










This one has lots of flowers!
こんなに沢山の花をつけている株も…

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