Many people have heard of Japan’s seven herbs of spring — the young greens chopped into rice porridge and eaten in early January.
But there is also a seven of autumn.
These you do not eat. They are not picked, boiled, or put in a bowl. So why are they called seven herbs, and why have people kept counting them for thirteen hundred years? Now that Obon has passed and the old calendar has already turned to autumn, let’s walk through them gently.
What this article covers
- Why the autumn seven are for looking at, not for eating
- The two poems in the Man’yōshū that started it all
- The names of the seven flowers, and what they look like
- Why nobody is certain what the seventh flower actually is
- Why one of the seven has become hard to find in Japan today
- How to meet the autumn seven where you are
Someone stood in a field and counted on their fingers
About thirteen hundred years ago, a poet named Yamanoue no Okura stood in an autumn field and counted the flowers in bloom, bending one finger at a time.
Two poems came out of it. They sit side by side in Book 8 of the Man’yōshū, Japan’s oldest surviving poetry collection.
The first goes, roughly:
In the autumn field, I bend my fingers and count the flowers in bloom — there are seven kinds.
That is the whole poem. It teaches nothing. It declares no great feeling. He counted. There were seven. That is all.
In the second poem, he names them:
Bush clover, silver grass, arrowroot flower, pink, maiden flower, and also boneset, and the asagao flower.
The form is a sedōka — a pattern of 5-7-7 syllables, said twice. A poem that does nothing but list seven names became, and remained, Japan’s index of autumn.
The seven flowers
Here they are, in the names we use today.
- Hagi (bush clover) — arching branches hung with countless small red-purple blossoms. It flowers around the autumn equinox
- Obana (Japanese silver grass, susuki) — the name means “tail flower,” for plumes that resemble an animal’s tail
- Kuzu (arrowroot, kudzu) — a vine that hangs clusters of red-purple flowers at summer’s end. Its root gives us kuzu starch
- Nadeshiko (fringed pink) — pale pink petals split into fine threads at the tips. The name is said to come from a child so dear you want to stroke their head
- Ominaeshi (golden lace) — tiny yellow flowers that gather into a haze
- Fujibakama (boneset) — small pale-purple flowers that release a sweet scent, like cherry-leaf mochi, once dried
- The asagao flower — and here it gets difficult
Who is the seventh?
What Okura meant by asagao has still not been settled.
The candidates put forward over the centuries are the Chinese bellflower (kikyō), the rose of Sharon (mukuge), the bindweed (hirugao), and the morning glory we know today. Of these, the bellflower reading is the one most often taken, and most dictionaries list it that way. But it is the leading view, not a settled fact.
A flower that someone named thirteen hundred years ago, and we can no longer point to with certainty. The autumn seven end on a small blank space.
In Japan there is a memory aid for the list — hasukī na ofukuro, “my husky-voiced mum” — whose syllables spell out hagi, susuki, kikyō, nadeshiko, ominaeshi, fujibakama, kuzu. Here too, the seventh is counted as the bellflower.
Spring is eaten, autumn is looked at
The spring seven have a clear use: chopped into rice porridge and eaten on the seventh of January.
The autumn seven have no such collective use. Their purpose is to be seen. Looking is the whole job.
Individually, of course, several have long-standing uses — kuzu root becomes kuzu starch, for instance. But there is no autumn observance that uses the seven as seven.
Not to eat, not to offer — simply to confirm that this many flowers are blooming in the autumn field. That is what Okura was doing.
Today, the seven are hard to gather
One thing should be said plainly.
Among the seven, fujibakama is listed as Near Threatened on Japan’s Ministry of the Environment Red List — a plant at growing risk of disappearing.
It originally grew in damp grassland, on the floodplains beside rivers where flooding kept bringing fresh soil. As embankments and river works stopped the flooding, the ground dried, taller grasses moved in, and the habitat itself thinned away.
Thirteen hundred years ago, standing in an autumn field was enough: bend your fingers and all seven were there. Today, one of them is hard to find. The poem did not change. The fields did.
How to meet the autumn seven
You don’t need to go anywhere special. Some of them are already nearby.
First, susuki. It grows on riverbanks and vacant lots, and it is the very grass displayed at moon-viewing.
Then kuzu — that vigorous vine smothering fences and slopes from late summer, with big three-part leaves. Look under the leaves and you’ll find red-purple flowers standing in spikes. It is often treated as a nuisance. Okura counted it among his seven.
And then: bend your fingers. You don’t have to know a single name. Walking home, just count how many flowers you saw today. That is exactly what the poet did.
In closing
The autumn seven are useless. You can’t eat them, and no festival calls for them.
Even so, they have been counted for thirteen hundred years. Someone said “there are seven,” and the next person checked on their own fingers. That is the only reason the list survives.
At the edge of autumn, if you find one flower by the roadside — even with no name for it — try bending one finger. You are already doing what Okura did.
