Floral Fumo Double Feature of the Week Second Part Hallow's Day/Hallowmas/Samhain Edition: Low Smartweed/Dog Smartweed (Persicaria longiseta)
So this is the next day, for Fumo Fridays because it lands on a friday and is also a holiday. This first picture does not have the plant I want to show but is made to follow along for story purposes. This tree is a Norway Maple that was shown before. Click here for Part 1
Yuuka noticed that the youkai carrying baskets were in groups, and remembered how Marisa was able to defeat her so easily, so she tries to search for an easy target. She finds a lone and innocent looking youkai in gaudy clothing sleeping on a tree. Yuuka thought of the youkai as weak, so she decided to attack with her giant spark spell at the poor sleeping youkai. After Yuuka attacked, she noticed that her attack didn't even work. The sleeping youkai surely would have woken up, but it never affected her. Yuuka tried to shoot simple bullets at the sleeping youkai, but then she found a gap that was taking in all of the bullets. She tried multiple times to shoot danmaku at the poor sleeping youkai, but gaps would instantly open just to take the bullets then immediately closed as if nothing had ever happened.
Yuuka tried one more trick: She took one big swing of her umbrella at the sleeping youkai's head, but then she woke up!
"Oh dear, I wonder what's with all of the noise?" said the sleeping youkai.
As the umbrella was about to hit, a gap immediately opened in front of the sleeping youkai's face and an arm quickly emerged to grab the umbrella. Yuuka became terrified, "My umbrella!"
"Don't you know it isn't nice to attack a fellow youkai? Have some manners!" The youkai continued, "Hmm, it doesn't look like you're in no position to be attacking youkai. Maybe I should have picked more carefully which youkai come into the Outside during this time, I guess I'll escort you back... Although I'm supposed to be hibernating right now."
A gap had taken the two back to a much more familiar place. A swampy area in Gensokyo.
"Just what was that all about anyways? Why was I in the Outside? Outsiders don't fear youkai like me anymore," Yuuka questioned her.
"Now now, it was just a mistake. I didn't understand that you are fading. Belief and fears in youkai are accelerated during this season in the outside to the point where it becomes much safer for youkai to tour, so I simply bring in many random youkai to participate in the "harvest" around the Outside for a while. I didn't understand your situation so well though," the youkai answered.
"Fading? I'm fading?" Yuuka became worried.
"Pardon me, I'm Yukari Yakumo, the Youkai Sage. Although I'm hibernating right now like the other sages. It seems a number of youkai are weakening recently. Perhaps I should have Ran investigate for me."
"Yuuka Kazami, I've never met you personally before. I just made my own world because not even Gensokyo suited me, but then they kicked me out." Yuuka sighed.
"I see, sorry about that. I do not think yours to be an original incident, the number of humans in Gensokyo have dwindled, it's threatening the balance of the world as we know it. Since I am hibernating, I will have my shikigami handle these matters for me," Yukari continued, "In the meantime, you don't look so well. Maybe you should mind your manners and focus more on attacking humans more instead of attacking anyone that you please, though. Especially a youkai in such a dying state as yourself."
Yuuka sulked, "Well, where I landed there were only other youkai around. So I thought humans were no more."
Yukari giggled, "Oh... You didn't mistake humans dressing in costumes as youkai? Let me explain: It's a western tradition on the Outside for humans to dress up as youkai in hopes that youkai won't attack them! Although, the tradition has spread to Japan in recent years, too. Surely, a youkai as old as you would know of it, right?"
Yuuka thought about it for a moment, and became flustered. She flew away out of embarassment
Yuuka was relieved for a moment that her feeling so weak and fading was not her own individual issue, but a larger issue affecting Gensokyo. For a long while after she started her plot to change her "nature," she felt alive, she was in her own fantasy as if there was nothing to stop her. The reality was that she was fading, dying. Surely, hopefully, it has to do with this particular incident occurring within Gensokyo, and not her own plans.
Hallow's day(originally Samhain in Gaelic, pronounced sauin, means summer's end) was originally an Irish-Scots (it was both) holiday about liminality, the many interpretations which were passed through mostly oral tongue is that the boundaries between reality and fantasy that were said weaken through "gaps"/portals to allow supernaturals to travel from the illusion world to the reality, and they would play pranks on humans on this day. To prevent supernaturals from attacking, humans would dress up as the supernaturals themselves.
Another more familiar interpretation it was also celebrated at the boundaries between summer and winter (autumn), light and darkness, life and death. so it would be ghosts that would enter and pull pranks. A necrofantasia if you will.
Only the eve is celebrated nowadays instead of the actual day, and thus, Halloween which is a mashup word of Hallow's eve. Because there are many interpretations to the festival because it was mostly passed through oral tongue and tradition, everyone has their own "truth" or their own "world" of celebrating. Also I am a bit late for this one.
The first photo is the Norway Maple, but I already talked about that one.
The flowers in the second photo are the Low Smartweed or Dog Smartweed. The name of the genus is a bit hard to explain: Persica is the latin name for peach, but that word was named after the Persian Empire/Persia (Iran) long ago. Persica is often given to a scientific species names that are native to Iran and other surrounding areas (like Syringa persica, Persian Lilac). Persicaria as in the genus of flowers refers to the flowers mostly being pink like a peach, but there are still many that coincidentally bloom in Iran, too.
This flower is native to most of Asia. It is oftentimes confused with the more popular Lady's Thumb(Persicaria maculosa), another plant with a much larger native range, and american persicarias. All persicarias have a characteristic of appearing in swampy areas, and is considered a weed by many. The difference between them is easier to find not by its flowers, but by the leaves (A lady's thumb is smaller and has a spot in the middle of mostly each leaf, while a low smart weed gradually grows dark) and the stringlike parts of the branches. Many persicarias are sometimes foraged and have different flavors, but they tend to be peppery and spicy like a cayenne pepper.
Persicarias are a fragile annual plant that does not last long but spreads quickly. It gives one final cluster of blooms before winter, before its eventual and quick death. Although Dog smartweed is invasive to the Americas like the Norway Maple, and considered a "pest" even in places that it's native to. Unlike the Norway Maple, it is much easier to remove and kill. There are persicarias all around the world, and many nonnative ones in one place are lookalikes to native ones in another. If you can identify them as native to your area then it is best to leave them alone.
The Norway Maple looks like it's dying because of the leaves falling, but it's a perennial plant that is very sturdy and lives, and the tree will grow new ones. The Low smartweed looks like it's living because it blooms flowers, but it's fragile, at its final breath and will eventually die.
Also this post was made so late there are only a few hours until Nov 1st is dead everywhere in the world.
Persicaria... and fumos are a type of doll... Hmm....
By Ken Borgfeldt Walking Oklawaha Greenway as many days as I have this past COVID -19 season, I began to notice that there were several Smar
