Wild orchids

Dear Alice,
Can you please find out what the heck I saw on Mount Takao on the outskirts of Tokyo? Last spring, about this time of year, I was on a trail with a lot of other hikers lugging cameras and tripods. All of a sudden everyone got very excited. Not knowing Japanese, I had no idea what they were talking so animatedly about, but one lady directed my attention to a group of pinkish white flowers high up in a fir tree. I think she was trying to tell me the name of the flower, which sounded something like “sankukuran.” Everyone was taking pictures. Not knowing what else to do, I took one too.
Leon de O., Tokyo

Dear Leon,

I’m no authority on flowers but I do know that “ran” means “orchid” in Japanese. It seemed highly unlikely that you had stumbled upon a wild orchid, and in Tokyo of all places, but not knowing what else to do, I pursued that thread first. Lo and behold, with only a little searching, I had soon sniffed out that the flower you saw is indeed an orchid: Dendrobium moniliform. In Japanese, it’s called sekkoku, or sekkoku-ran. So you heard the lady almost right.

Wild orchids in Tokyo! Who knew? Well, lots of people, it turns out. After only a bit more digging I learned that sekkoku is one of the big late-spring draws at Mount Takao, at least for flower enthusiasts. Blooming time varies year by year, depending on weather, but generally the sekkoku on Mount Takao strut their stuff from late May through the first half of June.