Magical Botany J

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  I'm not the only one blogging my way through the alphabet this month, and you can find out all about the A to Z Challenge here.

        J is for jinmenju, which is a tree bearing flowers just like human heads.  They smile and smile, and if you ask them questions the flowers laugh.  However, they don’t actually understand human speech, and if they laugh too hard, the flowers will wither and fall off.  This tree is described by Japanese and Chinese botanists, but it grows far away yonder, in the land of Daishikoku.

        A magical tree that does grow in Japan - and is no laughing matter - is the jubokko.  This cursed tree grows on battlefields where many people have died, and by sucking up human blood through its roots it becomes vampiric.  Then when a living person comes within range, its branches turn to tubes and suck the blood from its victim.  You can’t easily tell a jubokko by looking at it, although it may be unnaturally fresh in appearance, but if you cut it, it will ooze blood instead of sap.

        And another magical tree known in China, the jo mu may be a species of world tree (about which we’ll see more later).  It has blossoms that glow a beautiful scarlet so bright that it lights up everything beneath it, and its fruit may confer immortality.  Its trunk is enormously tall and straight and serves as a ladder between earth and heaven.  This tree is also sometimes called jianmu, but the name jianmu may also refer to a tree that’s clearly very different, so obviously there’s a certain amount of confusion about these various mythical trees.  At any rate, according to the ancient Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas, this second jianmu or “Founding Tree” looks like an ox!  If you pull at it, it has an inner skin that looks like a yellow snake.  Its leaves are like a stringed net, and its fruit is like a pomelo.  This is certainly no ordinary tree, and presumably must be magical!

        Today’s moral comes from the joopleberry shrub.  

As far as I know, this plant has no magical properties, but it is the subject of a proverbial saying on its home planet of Broop Kidron Thirteen, which is, according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, somewhat botanically eccentric.  So, the moral is that “The other Shaltenac’s joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky russet.”  Gardening tip of the day: use foliage as well as flowers to add long-lasting color to your borders.

        I’m noticing a theme here, of magical trees that start with the letter J and tend toward the color red.  How do you feel about red foliage in the garden, either all year round, or just in the fall?  Frankly, I don’t think there’s much that’s more magical than a sugar maple tree, but since it doesn’t begin with J, I must be mistaken.

[Pictures: Jinmenju, wood block print by Sekien Toriyama from Hyakki shūi vol. 1, 1805 (Image from Smithsonian Libraries);

Jubokko, illustration from GeGeGe no Kitarō by Shigeru Mizuki, 2009 (Image from Fandom);

Jo Mu (adapted from Paulownia), painting by Zhou Hu and Zhou Xi in Illustrated Herbal, 1644 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Joopleberry Shrub, illustration by AEGN adapted from 19th c. Arabic translation of De materia medica.]