A delight in the rain

Finally the rainy season is with us almost everywhere in Japan.

Soon I’ll get fed up with damp and wet climate which lasts about a month. I can’t do without my umbrella all the time.  
Yet one blessing during this season is to see hydrangeas in the rain.  At our back garden, this year too, they surely delight our eyes under a heavy, gray sky.  I'd love to see them especially wear raindrops.  It definitely drags me out of my discrimination against the rainy season.

I didn’t know home of hydrangeas is Japan before I read this on the web a few years ago.

Since they have so many different species throughout the world, it is seemingly hard to state how they were originally introduced at the very first stage.  

Strictly speaking, hydrangeas with round mop heads which are very much popular and  seen at any places in the world are not origin in Japan.  The original one from Japan has fewer outer flowers around smaller tiny inner flowers. 

It is said in 18th century a Japanese hydrangea was brought all the way to Kew Garden, England  by way of China. Soon they started to cultivate so as to meet up with its own condition such as climate, soil. This way they modified flowers to suit their preferences. It is also widely known that in 19th century a German physician and scientist, Phillipp Franz von Seibold introduced 17 species of Japanese plants to a  botanical garden in Lieden, which made it possible for hydrangeas to grow in Europe.

Eventually it was turned to a hydrangea of which head was like a pom-pom. Later a mop head hydrangea was re-imported to Japan.

Nowadays we see mop head hydrangeas at many house gardens or public venues or even at temples and shrines or landscapes in our country. So do original ones with simple frames.  No matter what kind of hydrangea flowers they are, we enjoy seeing a large volume of flowers and amazing color-changes.  They are such a gracious gift in the rainy season.