English Names for Japanese Morning Glories - #2

We came from here - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/555920/

Am reserving the 1st two posts here, will return tonight

this post reserved - hope y'all continue to chime in

This is not quite completed but I have been compiling kanji-romaji-english to better understand and access information from Kyushu. This below are the leaf forms. It does not include all of the forms, mostly the ones in the demono category as I am still compiling them.

I read a couple of questions about why blue/ao is used to describe the colour of the leaves - the kanji character for blue in the olden days was actually green. later on, the character for blue was then changed to blue. when the ao is used to describe leaves (ha), it means green.

NOTE: Hederaseaba is both in kanji and kana

Eliz

This message was edited Aug 7, 2009 11:20 PM

Eliz - Very nice! Do you mind if I save your cross-reference sheet to my hard drive so that I can print it out for future reference?

Jon may be able to help you as well. :-)

wonderful, Eliz - thanks so much

nope i don't mind becky :) if you want the hard copy, in word format i can send it to you so you can just copy and paste..

Eliz

Eliz - Thanks! It appears to be larger than what would fit on a standard 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. Is the size 11 x 14? If so, is there anyway you can reduce it down to the smaller size? If so, that would prevent you from having to send it to every single person who might also want it! :-)

I was able to right click on my mouse and save it to my hard drive. It saved it completely, but both ends were cut off when I printed it out. It looks great! I'm impressed! :-) It will prove to be very helpful in the future! :-)

(standing in line for Eliz' leaf/kanji/romaji/allele document!)

you are very welcome. I good friend also helped me with most of the translation, I would also like to give credit to him because without him my head would be all over the place XD

You guys are getting into some very deep water here as there are several readings of kanji.
first I think anyone interested ought to learn hiragana first, takes the average person around a month to learn.
kanji about ten years! hiragana, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
kanji http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
katakana is based on hiragana and used for all foreign words http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
These are the three writing systems used in Japan and you will encounter them in most texts.
I have to study these as I live here but it beats the proverbial outa me why anyone else would!

Jon

I try to understand Japanese to get a true presentation of what the grower or seed company is calling the MG strain or to understand the practical nuggets of wisdom on growing the plants that can be found on many gardeners' blogs. Presently I use Google web translator to get the gist of what is being said, but sometimes I wonder how accurate the translation is or what is being missed from the original Japanese language text.

Joseph if only it were as simple as using google to translate! Maybe one day, but yea it will certainly give the
gist. Or the important info!

Jon

Jon is right with being cautious about using kanji characters as there are radicals (radicals are used to look up the definition - it is like a root word for English speakers). I don't think the characters that I have provided should be used as an alternative for learning standard kanji. I found these common kanji characters used in Dr. Nita's website when he describes the leaves and flower of mutant morning glory strains. http://mg.biology.kyushu-u.ac.jp/mg-files/strainlist-brandnew/strainlist.html

Let's just say I received seeds that were labeled Q0751. I grew it out and i want to find out what Q0751 is actually suppose to look like. I look under the column （正木／出物）表現型 (Masaki/Demono) Phenotype - it's the traits that you actually see. You will see this under that column:

青（黄）斑入桔梗渦葉紅赤吹掛絞桔梗咲
青（黄）- green (yellow)
斑入 - variegated
桔梗渦 - star contracted
葉 - leaf
紅赤 - denotes the colour red
吹掛絞 - speckled
桔梗 - star
咲 - blooms

Therefore.....
Kanji: 青（黄）斑入桔梗渦葉紅赤吹掛絞桔梗咲
Romaji: ao (ki) fu-iru kikyo-uzu ha aka fukkake shibori uzu saki
English: blue (yellow) variegated star contracted leaves with red speckled star-shaped blooms

NOTE on Fukkake Shibori 吹掛絞....dissected kanji meanings or rather radical meanings
吹 blow
掛 painted
絞 squeeze
So it's like blown paint or a sprayed pattern when referring to plants - with this I needed a help of somebody familiar with the Japanese culture to actually understand why it is called fukkake shibori (Q0751 resembles this spray pattern on its flowers) :)

So a plant with blue or yellow leaves is what I should be looking for and if this plant carries for star-shaped blooms and red speckles, then I should be collecting the seeds from this plant worth labeling Q0751. Anything that deviates from this description should not be labeled Q0751 (for example if the speckled pattern turned out blue from the seeds of Q0751. This will most likely be named as Q0751.2 at the University not by us).

I wouldn't want to wait 10 years just to be able to read an mg description on Dr. Nita's site :), though I am also learning hirigana and a bit of kanji characters on the side I believe I should be able to enjoy and access the unlimited info provided by the professor.

Eliz

Eliz some of the kanji you have used here is not in general use in Japanese. Nowadays the general usage of
kanji is restricted to around 2000 characters where as in the past there were perhaps 5000 or more used.
Ancient texts may well contain some of these characters but very few Japanese people can read them today.
The word shibrori for example, refers to the old craft of tie dying, the speckles are therefore produced by
stitching the fabric prior to dying and has nothing to do with spraying paint or dye which is a modern concept and not relevent to the period these flowers were named.

Jon

You may all find this link interesting, I did!
http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/asagao/yoneda_db/e/Ipomoea/04.htm

Jon

oh okay, I didn't mean to imply it is sprayed by aerosol paint like in today's standards. I mean it the pattern looks similar to it (I do not know exactly how it is stitched, but I do know what shibori is and how there are different types of shibori). The column "English" does not mean it is a definite translation, and it is also not acquired through an online translation. the "English" column serves more as an English counterpart so for now, it is the closest that we can get to English.

the word Shibori, in horticultural terms is used to describe different types of patterning on corollas of flowers another example is Kuruma Shibori used by Dr. Yoneda on his English website linked above.

Fukkake Shibori, this term is also used by the Azalea society of America
http://www.azaleas.org/index.pl/azglossary.html
"Fukkake (satsuki pattern) - a fine spray of many specks originating at the edges, tending toward the center of the petal"

As I have mentioned and agreed with you before, they are not an alternative lesson for learning the Japanese language. I think it is okay to use as a resource when it comes to and, strictly speaking about morning glories. I am sorry if I may have given the wrong representation or may have led some people to think that these might be used in everyday Japanese communication.

Eliz

Eliz, your interpretation of "fukkaki" is spot on (pun not intended) I'm finding it very difficult to translate some
of these names, precisely because they have no meaning in everyday Japanese, Most of the names that have
already been translated are relatively easy. My wife studies "shibori" tie dye, where there are many different
techniques used, one of them produces the effect of "fukkuki" exactly as you described it.
I do agree naming of flowers has little to do with the Japanese language, it has so much more to do with their culture. I am very sorry that I misunderstood your original post and intention, my fault and not yours.

Jon

Well ... all I can say ... between the two of you ... I am getting quite an education in attempting to read Japanese seed packets. Thanks to both Eliz and Jon for enlightening us with your knowledge and observations! Very helpful information for everyone!

Eliz and Jon, together you two are really pulling the rest of us up the learning curve. I have not been working as hard as Eliz on this, so I wouldn't have followed the direction of her efforts that led us to the question that led to Jon's answer of how very different modern and older kanji is.

Personally, I enjoy the process of discovery and combining that with the appreciation of such gorgeous flowers has been a major gift of this forum to me. We need both folks who are not so knowledgeable for questions and other folks with more knowledge for answers. As it happens, each one of us knows more about some things and less about other things. There is so much we have to share among ourselves on this forum.

Thanks for reminding us of that link, Jon - I just came up for air to thank you for that. This is just fascinating and leads to - questions and more questions.
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Although off topic, Jon's link goes to a bhotan mutant, which looks like something like the peony-type MGs that Dany's mixed seed packet from Japan produced - http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/Asagao/Yoneda_DB/E/PCD2523/htmls/20.html . According to this link, "The petaloid structures of stamens and the pistil are ...completely sterile." So, I think I may have misled Dany when I hypothesized that seed of his peony-type MG flowers could be produced like other demono mutants, whose seeds are produced by fertilizing the pistil of the plain flowers with pollen from fancy flowers, because bhotan has neither fertile pollen nor fertile pistil, if I'm reading this correctly. And, perhaps I was wrong to contradict Becky, who hypothesized that one might look for single flowers that might have some fertile elements for pollenization (paraphrased). Does anyone know how the seeds that Dany received that produced his peony/bhotan type of flower came into existence, if both stamens (source of pollen) and pistil (source of future pod) are sterile?

Another question that Jon's link seems relevant to, but doesn't quite answer in a way that I can understand, is which of the mutants here - http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/Asagao/Yoneda_DB/E/species/Pharbitis_a.html are the ones whose fertilization depends on a plain flower being fertilized by the pollen from a fancy flower (demono mutants)? Dany asked me that question, and I would love to find an answer for him, since he seems to have such a diversity of MG types in his mixed seed packet.

I apologize for getting technical, but the know-how for saving seeds seems relevant for anyone who might like to grow these mutants for more than one generation. Given my family genetics, there's a high probability of a stroke in my future that could reduce my own memory and comprehension to the point that technical info will fly over my head, too - but I could still enjoy the flowers if I survived it. Hopefully we can all make room for each other's different circumstances and stages of life on this forum - we will each go through quite a few of them.

------------------
Well, if we can get these technical terms into our Japanese/English glossary - with simplest English explanations possible - that will be wonderful for everyone. I'm working on a - not final - list of what we've come up with so far for the first post of this thread. I expect it will evolve as we get more into this.

Thanks again, All, for contributing to this thread.

Karen

ps - y'all posted while I was writing this - apologies for any redundancies

This message was edited Aug 11, 2009 11:24 PM

I seem to have found some of the kanji I require. http://images.google.co.jp/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&hl=ja&q=asagao&lr=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=yWSMSsvTIIqZkQWcqZUg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4 It is very difficult to translate and will quite possibly take the rest of my lile!
LOL. Enjoy all the photos anyway.

Jon



This message was edited Aug 20, 2009 2:22 PM

Awesome photos on that link you shared with us, Jon! Thanks so much! I am enjoying all the bloom photos! NICE!!!

The link is incredible, thanks for sharing it.

Janet

So happy you enjoyed it! I am finding all sorts of stuff during my blunderings trying to get to the truth of these
translations, the deeper I go the more complex it's becoming! I seem to be learning more about asagao and the
cultural implications relative to my translation attempts.

Jon

I am in awe at some of the colors and surprised that some of my backyard ones have apparently been crossed b y the bees and apear quite similar. for instance I had a dark pink with light ink rays and net to it a light pink with dark pink rays. the same thing happened with the blues. and then there are some whites with barely a hint of either a blue 5 points of the rays that would have been from a star and th same with a pink.. Yesterday I saw a very dark blue (nearly purple) with what truly looked like deep red star in it. I have no idea how to collect seeds as these are all growing in a sort of 15 x 10' oval area above my septic tank. i tried to separate them and only succeeded in apparently uprooting many of them enough that they died. I guess I will have to plant in pots to separate them. My MG bed is probably 6 years old and has really just ben ignored since I thought they were pretty w__d_. Now I realize that I actually had some beauties. and am anxious to learm more about them

Sheri