A tiny bead sitting right in the middle of a green leaf — do you know what it is? Yes, hanaikada.
Just in front of Palaceside Building, near Fujimi Yagura in the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace, it is about to bloom. White flowers will open, and in summer the fruit turns dark purple.
Most flowers bloom from a stem, but this curious kind puts flowers and fruit in the middle of the leaf. The leaf is likened to a raft and the flower or fruit to a person, hence the name. The scientific name is Helwingia japonica — another plant with "japonica."
It also has amusing aliases: "mamakko" and "yome no namida" (a bride's tears). "Mamakko" does not come from a clingy "mama's child." Young leaves are cooked into rice as a vegetable rice, so it came to be called "meshi-ko" (rice-child), read mamakko.
I thought "yome no namida" might come from a bride's tears falling on a leaf after a mother-in-law's bullying or a husband's abuse, but that does not seem to be the case.
Long ago, a young bride ordered by a lord's messenger to "find a tree that bears fruit on its leaves" searched the mountains late into the night and could not find one. A tear of frustration fell at her feet and shone like a pearl in the moonlight in the middle of a leaf — that folktale seems to be the origin. Common name and aliases alike are full of flavor and charm.