This year I started to pay attention to the ground while walking. And I was amazed at how much the ground was filled with flowers.

This autumn, I realized that I could find garlic chives everywhere, even in parking lots. Or at least it looked like garlic chives. But was I right? This question was my starting point to be passionate about field flowers.

One day, one of my friends shared an app which uses AI to identify the exact names of plants. So I downloaded it onto my iPhone while walking. I just needed to pass my iPhone camera over the plants.

I remember the first moment I used it, because it showed a lot of names one after another through my iPhone camera. I felt like Helen Keller. Suddenly I could know many names and those names opened a new world to me. Suddenly the ordinary became extraordinary.

And the plant which was similar to garlic chives was actually another kind of plant which we cannot eat. However I could find many medicinal plants near my house. And some of them were rare. I also find very toxic plants which are common here. And some leaves were used to make kimonos in ancient times. It is still used for making kimonos. That was surprising!

初出：2020年10月21日