Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220115 
Tanuki Scroll XV: ナツツバキ 
I really liked the look of my birthday flower ナツツバキ from yesterday (thanks for sharing the link @iterimpius!), so I decided to read more about it.
It blossoms in the summer, I’m guessing around mid-June, and it symbolises: 無常観 [むじょうかん] - which is such a beautiful word. I guess ‘impermanence’ or ‘evanescence’ are the closest English equivalents, but it means the ‘perception of the fleetingness of life’.
One cool thing about the tree is its bark: as it grows the barks peels off and leaves a mottled like pattern:
It’s a one-day flower too, the buds pop open in the mornings and fall off at night, they don’t all open at once though, so it continues to bloom each day. When the flowers fall they fall whole, so it’s a popular tree for tea gardens (sounds idyllic). It starts to turn yellow and then to red in the Autumn and loses the leaves by winter.
It doesn’t seem to mention how it smells, but hearing about all the rest of it I now what to see one and find out!
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
無常観「むじょうかん」ー Perception of the evanescence of life.
I know I wrote it above but I didn’t want to make the main post bigger than it already was (this keeps happening), but there’s seriously so many connotations you can take from this word. This is one of the main reasons that I love Japanese, and want to learn it more, since words are a bit more poetic than English due to the kanji used and their individual meanings, there’s just so many ways to interpret words like this.
(If you couldn’t tell already this is now my favourite Japanese word.)
生長「せいちょう」ー Growth (of plants)
剥がれて「はがれる」ー To peel off; to become unstuck from. The kanji 剥 also means come off and peel, but can also mean fade or discolour.
釈迦「しゃか」ー Gautama Buddha; Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha)
沙羅双樹「さらそうじゅ」ー Sal Tree
蕾「つぼみ」ー Flower Bud
苞「つと」ー Straw-wrapped item; bundle of straw containing food
虫媒花「ちゅうばいか」ー Entomophily (I have no idea what this word means. Copypaste: “Entomophily is a form of pollination whereby pollen or spores are distributed by insects.”)
蒴果「さくか」ー Tree capsules
侘び寂び「わびさび」ー Wabi-Sabi, aka, today’s beautiful word #2!
I’ve seen this used, but only in English, I’ve not come across it in Japanese before, so it’s nice to see the kanji. It’s a little similar to 無常観: “aesthetic sense in Japanese art centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection”
Forgotten Readings
表皮「ひょうひ」(Epidermis)
花弁「はなびら」(Flower petal)
I don’t think I’ve seen this in full kanji before
YES
@rikaiwisdom, the cuteness is upon us!