November 2016

This post, the first in a series of six posts each focusing on a different aspect of the trip, is an introduction of sorts to Japan from the perspective of a first time visitor and also a botanist and gardener.
It may seem a bit self-indulgent to stretch out my recent trip to Japan with a series of blog posts. But prepping for these posts has allowed me not only to process the 8000 photos I took—no exaggeration—but also to revisit the myriad plants we saw, in particular the ferns, and the beautiful locales to which we travelled to see them.
It has also given me the time to process my impressions of the “Land of the Rising Sun”. It has given me the space to do further research and, yes, it has been a wonderful indulgence by which I extended and continue to extend my trip, which lasted only 17 days, for a few more weeks.

When I first heard of this tour focused on the ferns of Japan offered by Japan Specialized Group Tours I was intrigued, and baffled. How could a tour focus only on ferns? Still the intrigue outweighed the puzzlement, and I signed on. Certainly the idea of hiking in the forests of Japan was reason enough to tag along with members of the British Pteridological Society and the Hardy Fern Foundation. As a garden designer I am a great fan of ferns and use them in nearly all the gardens I make. Also as a plant collector I have amassed quite a collection of ferns, over 50 different types at last count, and have unwittingly become a confirmed pteridomaniac, a term of affection among fern lovers. This trip certainly clenched the deal, introducing me to many spectacular ferns I had never seen before and wonderfully charming pteridomaniacs, who are some of my favorite people on the planet now. I will get to the ferns and their lovers in subsequent posts.
I really want to just set the stage, so to speak, to draw a map of Japan in words and photos.
And that map would not be complete without water: from the Pacific Ocean to the countless rivers, ponds, drainage ditches, and puddles Japan is a watery place.
I am not saying that because we got rained on everyday. We actually only got rained on once. I am not saying that because we were exploring dank river valleys and swamps in search of water loving ferns. I am stating a fact.
The rainfall in Tokyo averages 60” a year, nearly double that of “rainy”Seattle, and that rain, heaviest in the summer months, falls year round. Farther south in the Wakayama prefecture, where we spent the second half of the trip, yearly rainfall averages about 130” a year. Even the driest months in our base town of Shingu have significant amounts of rainfall.
Though the strato-volcanic archipelago known as Japan runs from 24th to the 46th parallel, there is only one anomalous desert. Japan is a wet and humid place from beginning to end. Our trip kept us contained to the center of the main island of Honshu, but within that small region of the 430 or so islands that make up the country we were able to see a wide variety of habitats and plants.
Though I grow many Japanese plants in the gardens I created in the Seattle area, I don’t really know the Japanese flora. I was certain with all the volcanoes, mountain ranges, and waters that Japan would look a lot like Washington State.
Only a little.
Japan’s landscape and flora has much more in common with the southeastern portion of this continent. In the areas where we travelled the mountains were often soft, rounded and tree-covered. The general scale of things was smaller and tighter, at times reminding me of the Ozarks or the Vulkan-Eiffel of western Germany. With all the rainfall and hot humidity it is actually the antithesis of our modified
Mediterranean climate. The forests are generally broad-leafed, both evergreen and deciduous. Where we did encounter coniferous forest they were usually planted mono-crops. These forests were ideal habitats for ferns, along with many under story shrubs and herbaceous plants. What we saw was mind-boggling and complex.
Much more than I could take in at first glance.
So what I got were impressions, and that is mostly what I will share.

My first impression was of the agricultural fields across from our hotel not far from Narita Airport. The smell of damp earth, of curing peanuts piled in little “hut” immediately grounded me. The sky was a hazy gray, everything was damp.

Above Fukushima City at about 5000 feet above see level in Bandai-Asahi National Park, we hiked through this beautiful alpine bog. The air was definelty cooler, but the winds, ahead of the approaching typhoon, were strong. Fall color was just starting to show.

Later that day we were up in the forest behind Noji-onsen. Beech leaves were already clogging the forest streams and the whole hike was seasoned with the fragrance of sulfur from the steaming hot springs below. The clouds parted to afford us views of Mt. Kimen at the end of the day.

On the very popular Gosyokunuma Trail (the “Five Colored Ponds”) we encounter many interesting ferns and groups of Japanese tourists. But what we mostly saw was a variable series of wetlands, streams swamps and one of the five famous ponds was never far from the trail. The last pond pictured Yanagi-numa, “willow Pond” was of course my favorite.

Lake Hibara seemed like a gloomy Scottish loch and offered a particularly rare ferns, Isoetes.
The brooding sky was the typhoon that passed through Japan while we travelled.
The first raindrops hit the windshield as our bus headed back to the hotel for the day, and the storm pummeled the park while we slept.
We left the park under clearing skies in the morning.

If anything defines the landscape of Japan more than water it is rice fields.
A rice crop is totally dependent on water and the movement and control of this water
shapes every village and agricultural area we crossed.

The Kii Peninsula where we spent the second half of our trip is considered by climatologist to be the wettest subtropical region in the world. Some areas receive up to 200 inches of rain in a year. Human have been living here for thousands of years and have created canals,channels, ditches and weirs all in an effort to control the waters that can cause massive landslides and floods.

It is also a region of waterfalls. We spent the better part of an afternoon looking at ferns and basking in the misty of Nachi Falls, Japan’s most revered water fall, devoted to Kannon, or Kwanyin, and said to represent eternally flowing divine compassion. It was a beautiful and busy site.

Kuwanoki Falls was a different story. I raced ahead of the group and enjoyed a few moments alone in the depths of the forest at the foot of these falls, another of the most revered falls in Japan.

All of our travels in this region centered on the Kumano River which is fed by the innumerable streams and lesser rivers of the area. it was our near constant companion as we drove up and down its length on our way to fern viewing sites. The river runs along the north boundary of Shingu, the town where we stayed and was just blocks from our hotel.

The view from an old fort above our hotel looking back up the Kumano River toward the mountains that are it’s source, and where we spent time hiking and looking at ferns.

On the last day of our tour I woke early and headed down to where the river vanished into the Pacific Ocean.I tried to imagine the Washington coast out their somewhere across the one body of water we share with Japan.
I have seen the sun set many times into the Pacific at locations all along the west coast of North America; I wanted to see the sun rise out of the Pacific once.
The clouds barely parted on the horizon right at sunrise and the bright red ball that graces the Japanese flag made a brief appearance.