The Korean Herbalist

  The Real Fried Egg Flower: 불란서국화 (Oxeye Daisy) A few posts ago, this blog covered 개망초 — the plant Koreans called the weed of national ruin, which children renamed the fried egg flower. The name fit well enough: a small white flower with a yellow center, at knee height, scattered across every roadside in May. Then there is this one. If 개망초 is the fried egg flower, 불란서국화 is the fried egg flower from a restaurant that actually knows what it is doing. The same basic arrangement — white petals around a yellow disc — but executed at twice the size, with broader petals, a more substantial center, and the kind of clean, unhurried proportions that make you stop and look instead of walking past. 불란서국화 (*Leucanthemum vulgare*) is what 개망초 would be if it had been given more time and better conditions.   What It Is 불란서국화 is a perennial herb in the family Asteraceae, native to Europe and western Asia, now naturalized across much of the temperate world including Kor...

  Korea's Four Wild Roses: How to Tell Them Apart (생열귀나무) Korea has four wild roses worth knowing, and most people cannot name any of them. They see a pink or white five-petaled flower on a thorny shrub and move on. This is understandable — the roses of Korea all look, from a distance, like variations on the same theme. Up close, they are distinct enough that once you learn to read the differences, you will not confuse them again. This is 생열귀나무 (*Rosa davurica*), the Dahurian rose — the pink-flowered wild rose of Korean hillsides and roadsides, distinct from the white-flowered 찔레꽃, the coastal 해당화, and the cultivated climbing rose. It is the one most people walk past without a name for it.   The Four Wild Roses of Korea Before describing 생열귀나무 in detail, it helps to place it among its relatives. All four belong to the genus *Rosa* and the family Rosaceae. All four produce five-petaled flowers with prominent yellow stamens. All four have compound leaves with serrate...

  The Purple Flower That Monitors Radiation: 자주달개비 (Spiderwort) This plant has been used as a living radiation detector. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that the stamen hairs of *Tradescantia* — the small, fuzzy filaments visible at the center of each flower — change color when exposed to ionizing radiation. In normal conditions, the hairs are blue-purple, matching the petals. After radiation exposure, some cells turn pink. The more radiation, the more pink cells. The plant was subsequently used in studies around nuclear facilities and radiation-contaminated sites as a biological indicator, and it remains one of the more unusual applications of a garden flower in environmental monitoring. This is 자주달개비, spiderwort, and like several other plants on this blog, it came from North America.   What It Is 자주달개비 (*Tradescantia ohiensis* or *Tradescantia virginiana*, depending on variety) is a perennial herb in the family Commelinaceae, native to the easter...

The Wild Pink That Koreans Named After a Hat: 패랭이꽃 Every May in Korea, parents receive carnations. Red for living parents, white or yellow for those who have passed. The carnation — 카네이션 — has become so fixed in this role that most Koreans associate the flower almost exclusively with Parents' Day. It is a florist's flower now, something bought and pinned. Growing along the same roadsides where the carnation's cultivated relatives sit in cellophane in shop windows, there is a wild plant that belongs to the exact same genus. Same family, same structure, same fringed petals. It has been growing in Korea since before anyone thought of giving flowers on a particular day in May. It is called 패랭이꽃, and almost nobody connects it to the carnation they will pin to a lapel this month.   What It Is 패랭이꽃 (*Dianthus chinensis*) is a perennial or biennial herb in the family Caryophyllaceae, native to Korea, China, Japan, and southeastern Russia. It grows in dry, su...

  The Weed That Tastes Like Pepper: 콩다닥냉이 (Virginia Pepperweed) Pick a seed pod off this plant, put it between your teeth, and bite down. What you get is not the mild, grassy flavor of most roadside weeds. It is sharp, pungent, and distinctly peppery — an unexpected intensity from something growing in a crack in the pavement. The name explains itself once you taste it. 콩다닥냉이 — the 냉이 part refers to the shepherd's purse family of small mustard-family herbs, 다닥 suggests things packed closely together, and 콩 means bean or small round thing, a reference to the tiny round seed pods that line the stems. The English name is more direct still: Virginia pepperweed. The pepper is the point.   What It Is 콩다닥냉이 (*Lepidium virginicum*) is a biennial or winter annual herb in the family Brassicaceae — the mustard family — native to North America and now naturalized across much of the temperate world. In Korea it grows in disturbed habitats: roadsides, waste ground, cr...

  The Poisonous Plant Koreans Eat Anyway: 미국자리공 (American Pokeweed) There is a plant growing along Korean roadsides right now that is poisonous from root to berry. Every part of it — the root most of all, but also the stem, the leaves, the seeds — contains compounds that cause vomiting, diarrhea, slow heart rate, seizures, and in sufficient quantity, death. This is not disputed. Toxicologists are clear about it. The plant has killed people. Koreans eat the young leaves. Not carelessly. Not accidentally. Deliberately, seasonally, after a specific preparation process that involves boiling the leaves multiple times and discarding the water between each boil. The result, when done correctly, is a spring green that has been part of the Korean table long enough that people know its name, know when to harvest it, and know exactly what happens if you skip a step. The plant is 미국자리공 (*Phytolacca americana*), American pokeweed, and like several other plants on this blog, it came ...

  The Flower That Got Banned in Japan but Still Lines Korean Roads: 금계국 In Japan, it is illegal to grow this plant. Illegal to sell it, illegal to transplant it, illegal to purchase it. The Ecological Society of Japan placed it on its list of the hundred worst invasive species. A nationwide eradication campaign has been running for years. The government views it as an ecological threat requiring active intervention. In Korea, the same plant lines the roadsides. Highway medians. Riverbanks. The strips of earth between the road and the fence. Every spring, the same golden-yellow flowers appear in the same places, and nobody is particularly alarmed. The plant is 금계국 (*Coreopsis lanceolata*), the lance-leaved coreopsis, and it came from North America.   What It Is 금계국 is a perennial herb in the family Asteraceae, native to the eastern and central United States. In Korea it grows to between thirty and ninety centimeters tall, forming dense colonies from bran...

  The Fried Egg Flower That Koreans Called the Weed of Ruin: 개망초 Look at the flower. Yellow circle in the center, white petals radiating outward. If you grew up in Korea, you probably called it 계란후라이꽃 — the fried egg flower. A yellow yolk, a white of egg, served up on a stem at the roadside. Children have been calling it this for as long as anyone can remember, and the name is affectionate, even delighted. The flower does look exactly like a fried egg. The official name is 개망초. 망 means ruin. 초 means plant. 개 intensifies it into something common and low. Adults named this flower after national catastrophe. Children named it after breakfast. Both groups were looking at the same white petals and yellow center, and they found completely different things.   What It Is 개망초 (*Erigeron annuus*) is a herbaceous annual or biennial in the family Asteraceae, native to eastern North America and now naturalized across much of the temperate world. In Korea it grows to...

  The Flowers That Aren't Flowers: Korea's Guelder Rose (백당나무) Look at the flower head closely. Those large white petals arranged around the outside — the ones your eye goes to first — are not flowers. They do not produce pollen. They cannot set seed. They are a performance: flat, sterile structures that exist solely to attract insects toward the small, dense cluster of actual flowers packed tightly in the center. The plant figured this out without anyone's help. The real flowers are too small to be seen from a distance. The fake ones are visible from twenty meters. The insects go where the display is, arrive at the edge, and then find the real thing in the middle. It is one of the more elegant arrangements in the plant world, and it is happening right now, in May, in the shrub beds outside Korean apartment blocks and schools across the country. The plant is 백당나무 (*Viburnum opulus* var. *calvescens*), the Korean guelder rose.   What It Is 백당나무 is a d...