Hibiscus, or of Beauty

“Beauty shines brighter in the heart of him who longs for it than in the eyes of him who sees it.”
(Gibran)

Hibiscus. Penang. MALAYSIA – 5 January 2019

Flowers have interesting stories.

Let's take the hibiscus, a flower with different shapes and colors.

Everyone knows about my love for orchids, but this flower also has its charm.

The hibiscus, belongs to the Malvaceae family, is native to the tropical areas of the Asian continent and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, although nowadays it is widely spread and cultivated, for ornamental purposes, throughout Europe and North America. The name hibiscus derives from the Greek word hibiskos which means mallow and was attributed to the plant by Dioscorides, one of the most famous doctors of the ancient age, in 100 BC.

According to recent studies, the first specimens of hibiscus arrived in Europe, specifically in Holland, in 1500 from Asia Minor, a place from which Ghislain de Busbecq, a botanical scholar and Flemish ambassador to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent in Constantinople, sent home numerous specimens and botanical species.

Therefore, in Europe it began to be known only from the 1700s, with different names: “One hour flower”, “Guinea sorrel”, “Rose of China”.

Chinese hibiscus is among the rarest and most valuable.

The first specimens imported into Europe were originally from China: this was the reason why the hibiscus was called “Chinese Rose” for many years. European plant growers were literally dazzled by the beauty of these flowers from the very beginning, and it was in these years that the idiom began to be used to describe a very beautiful woman: “more beautiful than a Chinese rose”, referring obviously to hibiscus.

From the very beginning of history, in mythology and poetry, human beings have used nature as a metaphor for human affairs.

Each natural element has entered poetry and common language as a metaphor.

Hibiscus has this double nature: short life and beauty.

“One hour flower”, it's called.

Its flowers are delicate and very light and have a very short duration, usually one day; for this reason, giving hibiscus is intended to enhance the lightning-fast and fleeting beauty. The nineteenth-century love language has indulged in this flower: giving one to the beloved means “you are beautiful”, the white-flowered Syriac praises the loyalty and red the patience of the suitor, while the changing colors attest to a refusal. The blood red, needless to say, is “wounded to the heart”. This says the language of flowers.

Yes, this flower shows its splendor only for a few hours: it opens in the morning and in the late afternoon it fades and dies.

This is because in Europe it has become the symbol of lightning and delicate beauty.

In Asia and in the Polynesian islands its meaning is slightly different.

In Hawaii, hibiscus is very important, so much so that it is a symbol of the state, and it's customary to give it to visitors as a sign of welcome. Also in Malaysia it's the national flower since 1960.

According to some oriental traditions, offering a single hibiscus flower to a loved one is equivalent to a marriage proposal.

On the island of French Polynesia, Tahiti, according to local traditions, it is widespread custom for boys to use the flower to signal their sentimental state, placing a flower on their right ear, in case they are engaged, or placing it on the left ear, in case they are free; while women wear it, both in clothes and hair, as a sign of gratitude and fidelity to their man. According to traditions, in fact, a married woman must put a hibiscus flower on the right side of her head, while unmarried girls put the flower on the left side or behind the ear. Tahitian traditions were well represented by the painter Paul Gauguin, who in many of his paintings, made in Tahiti, depicted local women adorned with hibiscus flowers.

Paul Gauguin. “Tahitian women”, 1891

I feel a slight nuance of meaning in these apparently similar ways of reading the symbolism of this flower.

While in Asia and Polynesia the hibiscus remains the flower of beauty, and of the sentimental state, even eternal, like the love one promises to one's spouse.

It reminds me of the “sindoor” of married Hindu women: the red line on the forehead at the hairline.

The practice of wearing sindoor for married women is much deep rooted. Sindoor has red color which symbolizes power. It is believed that goddess Parvati protects the husbands of all those women who puts sindoor. Therefore it gives power to married Hindu woman to protect their husband from evil.

In Europe, on the other hand, the hibiscus is the one-hour flower, of beauty that blinds like a flash and fades quickly, withering and raining its petals on the ground.

As we have seen other times, on the theme of shadow and Tanizaki's texts in Japan, the idea of oriental beauty is profoundly different from ours: it also contemplates its path towards old age, the shadows of beauty are always a basic part of it. 

The scar should not be covered but decorated with gold.

We Europeans, on the other hand, are sadly linked only to the cult of beauty in its splendor, without shadows and wrinkles: a flower that lasts a few hours and then withers is the perfect metaphor for beauty.

Poor women forced to shine for a short period of time, counting the hours and looking at the sun, with tears in their eyes, in its downward curve.

But beauty is not in the skin.

Even the famous “night beauty” flower, the Mirabilis jalapa, is so called precisely because it is a nocturnal flower that releases a pleasant scent after sunset. In fact, it only opens when the sun goes down and then closes again at dawn.

Different fate from the fleeting hibiscus. This flower shows itself alone at night and then closes. Its beauty is no longer visible but remains enclosed in the petals, it does not fade.

Indonesia, 2010

Bangladesh, 2020

I have always been convinced that beauty should be sought not only in the face that is offered to the eyes, but in its particular light that remains even when wrinkles come, even in old age.

Those who have been beautiful remain so forever, but time hides them, age, wrinkles, like the sun that makes the petals close to the flower.

It is unfair to link the hibiscus to this idea of beauty, it has come to us from the East and must carry the same power with it: this vision must be reversed.

It is not a metaphor of beauty because it is short in time, but for its quality itself, the same that dazzled the European growers of the nineteenth century.

As long as we continue to see the brevity of beauty as its main quality, we will never be able to fully enjoy it.

As soon as the petals start to crack we look away.

It's already gone...

Rome, 2018

Tahitian women wore it in their hair every day, before and after the wedding, because beauty is in time.

Dear hibiscus, pay no attention to the judgment of men, who are small in front of your gleaming beauty.

An ancient poet said that the secret of the caterpillar is to wait years to become the butterfly for a single day.

Only those who are able to grasp the secret of your beauty, even in the moment of death, have eyes in love.

In reality, I explain to you, whoever believes that this is beauty has – deep down – only fear of death, does not accept that things change, lose grace, bend, have wrinkles.

Don't worry about it, ignore us, and enjoy the scent of Tahitian women's hair.

Hibiscus. Penang. MALAYSIA – 5 January 2019

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