Flowers in season at Kirigamine

Early September in my part of the world is still summer.   My husband and I went on a trip to Kirigamine and Kamikochi to feel the coming of autumn and to restore ourselves from the fatigue of the summer. 

Flowers are so kind as to give their nectar till their last moment.

One of our favorite travel destinations is highlands surrounded by the Japanese Alps soaring high.  At the highland at altitude of 1500-1900 meters in this season,  almost all the summer flowers are past their prime time, some of them swaying their withered figures in the wind, but autumn flowers are blooming one after another. 

These are summer flowers I found still lingering.

シモツケ, Filipendula multijuga, or meadow sweet

ツユクサ or commelinaceae

I like this time when mountains restore its stillness after summer holiday is over and air gets rapidly cooler and cooler.  It was my fourth visit to Kiriga-mine: first for Niko-kisuge (YouTube) in July, second enveloped in a dense fog ("kiri-ga-mine" means "fog-ridge"), third in autumn, and this time to see Scabiosa which I love but hadn't seen in person.

Scabiosa is “matsumushi-so” in Japanese because it starts blooming at the time when autumn insects "matsu-mushi (pine crickets)" start chirping.  The bloom of the flower tells the arrival of autumn at the highland. Though time was right, I couldn't see many of ScabiosaI as I had expected, so you'd understand how I was happy to find them flowering here and there.  

I do love these small flowers of soft lavender blue. 

Other autumn flowers are.....

野紺菊, or aster microcephalus var. ovatus, will bloom till frost.

What is this?

(This is cimicifuga,  cohosh, or サラシナショウマ.  Thank you, marijke and cosmos.)

This looks like a thistle but doesn't have prickles.

I wonder whether this is タムラソウ or　野あざみ in Japanese?

(タムラソウ. Thank you, cosmos.)

What would you call this flower in English? 

(Knapweed.  Thank you, Runy.)

We left when a large-scale, slow-moving typhoon No. 12 was approaching.  We decided to go as scheduled because it was far away.  During the trip it was raining on and off as the rain front was stimulated, so I couldn't take so many pictures. 

Now it is so calm that I can't believe the typhoon will be landing Kansai area several hours later.  This would be the calm before the storm. 

at Azumino

 Next time, I will report about the latter part of my trip to Kamikochi.

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