In the early morning of October 1st a fabulous picture was sent to my phone from my friend who had just arrived at Kinchakuda garden in Saitama Pref. which is famous for its spacious field of red cluster of amaryllis in full bloom.
She woke up early to get there before the crowd of visitors. The flowers were shining in the morning sun. This flower is called “Higan bana” or “Manju shage” in Japanese.
Higan is an equinoctial week when we Japanese visit graves to pray and this flower starts to bloom faithfully in autumnal equinoctial week every autum. " -bana" is a liaison from hana meaning flower. “Higan bana” means flowers that bloom in autumnal equinoctial week. It definitely begins to show its red hue around September 20th, autumnal Higan. It has been a mystery for me to find this flower just around Higan and it seems as if it tells us it is the time to visit your grave to greet your ancestors. I came to know they begin to bloom when the temperature drops around autumnal Higan.
As this year, 2024, we had an unusually hot summer due to the climate change, "Higan bana" came into bloom about a week later than usual in comparison to most other years.
The other name “Manju shage” comes from Sanskrit, meaning the flower that blooms in heaven or the red flower that drops from heaven as a sign of good fortune.
I don't appreciate the English name “red spider lily” very much as it doesn't seem to convey what this flower represents.
Seven years ago, a red flower dropped from heaven to my garden. It was a great surprise to find one red "Manju shage" in the corner of my garden around Higan that year for the first time. I don’t remember if I had a good fortune or not but it was a nice present itself.
The following year I found two red flowers, the third year four, the fourth year eight, and so forth. I have learned it increases by two every year. Every year when Higan approached, I looked forward to seeing the flowers and counting how many bloomed. I started watching how they grew and came to understand.
A stem with a bud emerges from a bulb.
The stem grows and a bud begins to turn red.
Then the bud begins to bloom.
When the flowers reach full bloom, leaves sprout to form bulbs.
I can’t tell if the flower bulbs and the leaf bulbs are the same or different.
After the flowers are finished, a lot of thin leaves grow thickly.
The leaves stay green over the new year and wither and turn yellow in February
They sleep until September and wake up again.
Over the years, the bulbs in my garden increased so much that they were unable to spread themselves in the small space of my garden corner and appeared on the ground like a mountain. I felt sorry for them and asked the gardener to dig them up before they would bloom this year. I had the pleasure of enjoying theses flowers for many years. They entertained me and my family and now sadly we miss them.
Then, I received the stunning picture of a field of "Manju shage".
A present from heaven?
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