Illustrated Japanese Culture
梅
Ume, Prunus mume, is a deciduous tree grown in Japan for both blossom and fruit. Its flowers, garden cultivars and preserved fruit belong to different parts of the same plant’s story.
01
Ume generally flowers before its leaves unfold. A basic single flower has five petals and many stamens, while cultivated varieties can have double flowers and colours ranging from white to red. Its fruit develops around a hard stone.
Cultivars vary; identify the plant using several features together.
Ume petals usually have rounded tips, whereas cherry petals often have a notch. Look at the flower stalks, branches and timing of leaf growth as well as the petals. Pink or white colour alone is not enough to identify the tree.
In much of Japan, ume flowers before the cherry season. In Hokkaido, their flowering can be much closer together. Flowering time varies with climate and cultivar.
02
Different uses of the fruit, not consecutive steps.
Hanaume are selected mainly for ornamental flowers; miume are grown mainly for their fruit. These are cultivation purposes, not two separate species. Japanese growers developed many garden cultivars during the Edo period.
A common horticultural scheme groups flowering ume into yabai, hibai and bungo lines. Colour alone does not reproduce that classification. The cultivar Omoi-no-mama can even bear both red and white flowers on one tree.
03
Ume is native to China and has a long history of cultivation in Japan. The precise date of its introduction is uncertain.
At Ōtomo no Tabito’s residence in Dazaifu, a plum-blossom gathering in 730 produced thirty-two poems preserved in the Man’yōshū. In 2019, the era name Reiwa was drawn from the preface to that group of poems.
Hiroshige’s 1857 Plum Estate, Kameido, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, depicts a place visited for its ume blossoms.
04
Ogata Kōrin’s eighteenth-century Red and White Plum Blossoms is a pair of two-panel screens in the MOA Museum of Art. Flowering trees and a stylised stream are arranged against a gold ground.
Colour varies with the recipe; red shiso may be added.
Ume fruit is processed into foods and drinks including umeboshi and umeshu. Umeboshi making includes salting and sun-drying, with recipes varying by producer and region. Wakayama’s Nankō ume was registered as a cultivar in 1965 and is associated with fruit production.
Prunus mume.
It is native to China and has long been cultivated in Japan.
Single flowers typically do, but cultivated double forms have more.
No. Petal tips, stalks, branches and leaf timing also matter.
No. Their flowering can be close together in Hokkaido.
No. The names distinguish cultivation mainly for flowers or fruit.
Yes. Omoi-no-mama is one cultivar that can do so.
A plum-blossom gathering produced thirty-two poems preserved in the Man’yōshū.
A pair of two-panel painted screens.
Salting and sun-drying.