Discussion

For the last three week's we have been studying pairs of Japan's Seven Flowers of Autumn. Each pair has also been featured in that week's demonstration painting. The last of the seven flowers, eupatorium, is this week's subject. Consistent with previous weeks, the eupatorium painting will be accompanied by other plants. For the first time, however, I will have two demonstration paintings. The second one will feature all seven autumn flowers in a single composition. The most important challenge in such a painting is devising a composition that works.

About Eupatorium (fujibakama 藤袴)

Eupatorium is a genus of flowering plant related to asters. The exact number of eupatorium species is being debated. The family once contained as many as 800 species, but most have since been reassigned. Today, the number ranges from 36 to 60 species. The specific species known as fujibakama in Japan is eupatorium fortunei.

Fujibakama is dying out in the wild in Japan but is widely cultivated. It has white to reddish flowers, and when the plant is crushed, it yields a lavender-like smell. The Chinese make fragrant oils from it. Fujibakama is used in Chinese medicine for poor appetites, nausea, and vomiting.

Fujibakama grows from 15 to 40 inches tall. Leaves are from 2 to 4 inches long, ½ to ¾ inches wide, and have saw-toothed edges. The leaf shapes of cultivated fujuakema can vary widely from wild plants.

See the photo below for a much closer look at the cluster of tiny flowers that make up each fujibakama blossom.

In case you are not certain, that yellowish thing in the center is a bee. If you decide you would like to add an insect to your painting, the Monarch butterfly below might be worth considering.

Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) produced the ukiyo-e print below of pinks and fujibakama sometime in the 1830s.

The Seven Flowers of Autumn Reprise

The earliest known mention of the Seven Flowers of Autumn (Aki-no Nanakusa 秋の七草) was in Man’yōshū , Japan's earliest anthology of poetry, written sometime after 759 AD.

The flower names and Japanese writing in the poem are old fashioned. For my syllabus and lessons, I've used modern versions. The names may be different in some cases, but the flowers are the same.

Here are some of the simplest photos of the seven flowers. These serve as a reminder and possible models for your own paintings. You are free to choose any one of them for a painting subject, combinations of more than one, or all, most challenging of all, all seven.

bush clover (hagi)

Japanese pampas grass (susuki)

Eupatorium (fuibakama)

dainthus or Pink (nadeshiko)

patrinia scabiosaefilia (ominaeshi)

Japanese arrowroot (kuzu)

Chinese bellflower (kikyō)