Photo: WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, via iNaturalist, licensed CC BY 4.0. Unmodified apart from resizing.
Colour
yellow
Region
Japan and temperate East Asia
Season
winter
Shape
single flower
IUCN status
Least Concern
Identification
A deciduous shrub to 4 m with an erect trunk and opposite rough leaves 5–29 cm long and 2–12 cm wide. In winter, on bare branches, hanging small flowers with waxy translucent pale yellow tepals, the inner ones striped purple-red (all yellow in the suxin forms), intensely and purely fragrant, the most scented flower of deep winter; named in Chinese for petals like beeswax and unrelated to the plum. In Iran it is the ice flower.
Habitat
Hill forest at 300–700 m, widely planted in gardens, temples and parks, hardy and drought-tolerant.
Distribution
Native to China, wild in the hills of the centre, east and south-west (Hubei, Shaanxi and elsewhere) and grown everywhere; commonly grown in Japan (rōbai), absent from Singapore.
Season and behaviour
December to February, flowering in the depth of winter, classically in snow; a month or more.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
The waxy translucent tepals glow like yellow jade against the light, its decisive illumination; a dark trunk or shade behind, half a stop under. In snow, shoot the flowers under their snow caps at plus one stop. Small sparse flowers want a macro of the purple-red stripes within. The scent is strongest on a mild sunny afternoon, and a person in the frame can carry the idea of smelling it.
Photographic styles
Waxy flowers like yellow jade against the light; one point of yellow in snow.
Similar species
Japanese apricot (Rosaceae, petals and sepals, early spring, not waxy); Chinese sweetshrub, Calycanthus chinensis (summer, white tinged pink, endemic to Zhejiang); winter jasmine (six-lobed flowers, green stems).
Related badge
None yet. No validated photo recognition exists for this species, so no badge is tied to it: a name in the encyclopedia is not evidence in a photograph.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from iNaturalist; its licence and author are under it.
Why it is listed: this species comes from the Flower checklist (GBIF backbone and Wikidata verified). Names follow the GBIF backbone and Wikidata; the facts follow the sources below; photo recognition is not offered.
