Birth flower for April 9
Japanese kerria
Meaning: nobility
A famous Japanese tale tells of the warrior Ota Dokan asking for a straw raincoat in the rain. A young woman silently handed him a sprig of kerria instead, recalling an old poem lamenting that the double kerria, for all its flowers, bears not a single fruit, a pun on the word for raincoat. Embarrassed that he missed it, Dokan devoted himself to poetry. The traditional color yamabuki-iro is named after this flower.