Cherry blossoms against a brilliant azure sky.
The Yangmingshan 2007 Flower Festival in Taipei kicks off today and according to Taiwan Headlines, hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected to visit Taiwan’s famous northern National Park from today until the 26th of March to watch and admire as the mountain side bursts into a riot of color this spring.
Yellow fever.
Yellow calla lilies.
In the cool shade, tiny white Chinese hydrangea blossoms flourish.
A simple white camellia represents admiration, perfection and ideal love.
We thought we’d beat the crowds and go a day early to avoid traffic jams and hundreds of thousands of tourists. Ha! I should have known better. There are two things that are always a certainty with the people of Taiwan. The Taiwanese love nature and they love their pets. That meant that we had a huge combination of all three yesterday when we arrived at Yangmingshan National Park yesterday afternoon.
Despite the crowds, we immensely enjoyed wandering around the park. The park has been landscaped beautifully to look like a traditional Chinese garden. There are pavilions, kiosks, fish ponds, streams, fountains, ponds and of course, flowering shrubs, trees and plants everywhere the eye can see. I can only imagine how tranquil and imperturbable this place when it’s quiet. It must be utter paradise. No wonder everyone comes here to escape the city life. Now I understand why people also call Yangming Park “Forest in the City” and “Imperial Garden of Taipei”.
Bronze statue of Wang Yang Ming. The park was originally called Grass Mountain, but the name was changed to honor the philosopher, Wang Yangming (1472-1529).
Despite the hoards of people, we enjoyed our day in the park. We limited ourselves to Yangming Park, which is roughly 107 hectares in size. We barely had a chance to explore, as the fabulous and well-kept grounds provided oodles of breathtaking flowers of an amazing variety.
Yangmingshan National Park itself is 11, 455 hectares and is sited along a system of dormant volcanoes. The Beitou area in particular is infamous for its hot spring resorts. We haven’t had a chance to indulge yet, but this is on our list of things to do. We are quickly discovering that Taiwan’s National Parks are a spectacular treasure trove of natural beauty.
Nature loving at its best. Walls of melastoma candidum provide the perfect amount of shade from the sun.
melastoma candidum
So that’s what those gorgeous purple things are called…
Yeah. I’ve been wondering myself since I arrived here over a year ago. I love these little guys and they seem to grow almost anywhere here. I was a little surprised by the name though. They sound like some type of skin cancer.
Most people just call them Asian melastome. They grow in Hawaii, too. The Latin names of a lot of plants sound like diseases, since a lot of diseases are named in a similar way.
For the curious, melastoma is the name of the genus, which is followed by the name of the species in a Latin or “scientific” name. So, other plants of the same genus will start with the same word. For example melastoma sanguineum, or “fox-tongued melastome” would be another plant species of the same family. It would be a little odd to go around calling them them by their latin names, though. It would be kind of like calling mountain zebras equus hartmannae.
Thanks Mark! I wasn’t sure how to go about identifying the Asian melastome at first until I saw it in a brochure at the Yangmingshan Flower Festival last week. It’s too bad Yangming Park doesn’t offer a genus name and a common name, since most people identify flora and fauna by a common name, rather than learning hard to remember Latin names. Where did you find your information?
Radio Taiwan International just linked my article to their website for my photos at the Yangmingshan Flower Festival this year.
[...] and were able to find every other museum except the one we were looking for. We saw signs for the Yangmingshan Flower Festival, the Science Museum, the Astrological Museum and Sea World, but ne’er a glimpse of The [...]
Jed Jelliman
Wow! We see little bits and peices here and there but don\’t really get a sense of how lovely the whole thing is overall.