Is "Keito" your birthday flower?

Keito is the Japanese for celosia flowers, which are also called plumed cockscomb in English. To be honest, I'd never heard of either of those names for keito flowers before I came to Japan , so I still tend to call them by the Japanese flower name; keito. If you know a more common name for these flowers in English, please do share in the comments. 

Both the Japanese name "keito" and the English name "cockscomb" come from the appearance of the flowers. As you can hopefully see in the photo above, the flowers resemble the plumb on a rooster chicken! The meaning of the flowers differs between the languages. In English they are said to represent "affectation" and "singularity". Whereas in the Japanese 'hanakotoba', language of flowers, keito represent "fashionable", "pretentious" and "eccentric".

If you were born on September 5th, keito are one of your birthday flowers! They are also the birthday flower of August 24th and August 29th. In Japan you can usually find some in bloom around those dates. However, the best time to see them is generally from the middle of September. Have you seen any "keito" in bloom yet this year?