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Nelumbo nucifera

The name lotus has been applied to cars, restaurants, a yoga position, and numerous other things. This week's painting subject refers to the lotus plant, Latin name Nelumbo nucifera, known in Japan as hasu.

t is also variously called Laxmi lotus, Indian lotus, Egyptian bean, and sacred lotus. The latter name is due to its religious associations going back to ancient Egypt, representing a path from death to rebirth in the afterlife. Hindus and Buddhists see it as representing the path to spiritual awakening and enlightenment. Christians associate it with the apostle Thomas's journey to India.

San Diego's Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park has a centuries old bronze statue of Buddha seated on a stylized lotus blossom. Such depictions of religious figures sitting on lotus blossoms are common.

Lotus is a water plant that flourishes in slow moving rivers and delta areas. It is sometimes confused with water lilies, but but the two are quite different. Here is a lotus plant. Individual plants can reach several feet out of the water with a spread of about four feet.

Here are water lilies for comparison.

The difference between the shapes of the leaves are easy to see. Lily leaves (pads) float on the surface of the water while lotus leaves rise above the surface. The blossoms are superficially similar, but close up, they are clearly very different, especially around the sex organs in the center.

The number of petals in lotus blossoms varies from the relatively few shown in the photo on the right above, a typical amount, to thousands per blossom. One variety cultivated in Japan has about 5,000 petals per blossom. The one shown below has a mere 1,000 petals.

otus blossoms come in a variety of solid colors, usually pink, white, yellow, and red. Though rare, blue, yellow, and purple colored blossoms also occur.

Bi-colored lotus are most often white with pink tips.

The odd structure at the center of lotus blossoms is a seedpod.

An immature lotus seedpod looks like this without its petals.

When the seeds are ripe, it looks like this.

These are lotus seeds ready to use.

Lotus seeds remain viable for very long periods of time under ideal conditions. A 1,288 year old seed recovered from a dried lakebed in China was successfully germinated.

There are three primary commercial cultivars of lotus plants; those grown for the flowers, those for seed, and those for the rhizome (roots). Every part of the lotus plant is edible. Well developed lotus rhizome (roots) is eaten as a vegetable in Asian cuisine.

Lotus seed paste (made by cooking, grinding, and mashing seeds) is used in many baked products.

The various parts of lotus plants are rich in vitamins and minerals. They are also used to treat a wide variety of conditions in traditional Chinese medicine.

Flooded fields are used for growing lotus plants commercially. Sometimes those fields are used simultaneously for raising fish, shrimp, or crabs. Lotus are perennial plants that bloom July through September with little maintenance.

In 2005, there were an estimated 740,000 acres reserved for lotus cultivation in China.

Not to be outdone by China, Japan has its own relationship with lotus plants as shown by this photo taken in Tōkyō's Taitō ward adjacent to Ueno Park.

Though not as packed as the Tōkyō lotus pond above, Echo Park in Los Angeles is famous for its lotus plants, too, especially when they are in bloom.

Artwork

Japanese floral artists sometimes use lotus plant elements in flower arrangements. The arrangement below is from the Ikenobo school of ikebana.

Suzuki Harunobu (1725 – 1770) 

Harunobu was the first ukiyo-e artist to apply new color printing techniques to the production of hanga-ga (woodblock prints). His nishiki-e (full color prints) reinforced the popularity of ukiyo-e and paved the way for the great artists that followed him. Haruobu was a very good artist himself as shown by Women Gathering Lotus Blossoms (1765).

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858)

One of Japan's greatest landscape ukiyo-e artists, Hiroshige produced several series of prints depicting Japanese scenery. From his series, Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (Edo), this print (second in the series) is titled Lotus Pond at Shinobugaoka. It isn't certain, but this may be the same location that the photo above of Tōkyō's lotus plants was taken.

Kaishuntei Sadayoshi (active c. 1832-1853)

A pupil of Utagawa Kunisada (1786 – 1865), a master of bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful people) ukiyo-e, Sadayoshi produced mostly yakusha-e (actor prints). This triptych, a memorial print (tsuizen-e), is one of his larger works. It honors four actors, one of whom was Osaka's most popular actor of the time, Nakamura Utaemon III, who in 1838 had recently passed away. Huge crowds attended the funeral. He waits to be ferried across a lotus pond into paradise. The other figures in the print are actors who Utaemon had shared the stage with and who had died before him. The most prominent of them, Arashi Rikan II, had died a year earlier and waits in paradise. The two in the ferry boat are Arashi Sangorô IV and Nakamura Matsue II who had died three years previously. Because the first and third anniversaries after ones passing are important events in Japanese culture (among others), this triptych is a special memorial for three of the four actors depicted.

Ohara Koson (1877 – 1945)

Koson was part of the shin-hanga movement in the early 20th century to restore traditional Japanese values, techniques, and subjects to Japanese woodblock print art. Though he painted many subjects, Koson is most noted for his kachō-ga (birds and flowers pictures). In this fanciful 1910 print, Dancing Fox, the fox is standing on his hind legs and wears a lotus leaf for a hat. Japanese folklore gives foxes and other kitsune (supernatural creatures of the night) the ability to change their forms. Foxes especially can turn into beautiful seductive women or monks. They must cover their heads with leaves or straw in order to transform themselves.