Yellow tulips, a birthday flower of May 17th

There are at least three different birthday flowers of May 17th annually in Japan. In my previous post, I introduced one of them - Fuchsia flowers. But yellow tulips, a cheerful spring flower, are another of the birthday flowers too. Apart from May 17th, yellow tulips are also a birthday flower of March 13th and March 20th.

Currently, you can see tulips in some parts of Japan, but in the Kanto plain, aka Greater Tokyo area, they typically bloom in March or April. There are early blooming tulips that bloom early in March, but the main season is often in sync with the Somei Yoshino cherry blossoms. Hence you sometimes see photos of cherry blossoms with tulips side by side. 

In the 'hanakotoba' language of flowers in Japan as well as in western language of flowers, the yellow tulip represents "hopeless love". In the 'hanakotoba' they also have the additional meaning of "fame". And in English they have several additional meanings, such as "brightness" and "sunshine".