Photos of Fawn Lily Flowers in Sagamihara-City, Kanagawa Prefecture

These flowers are fawn lilies, in Japanese it is Katakuri which grow wild in many places on main Japanese islands. Usually this plant can be seen in deciduous forests and the flowering season is March, but the flowers are not so eye-catching in the forest as you can see in the hand side photo.
 

However this plant is very well known among Japanese people, because it was the original raw material of starch powder in Japan. In old times people collected the rootstocks of the plant the forests and produced starch powder.

Nowadays starch powder is made from potatoes since people can produce it much more efficiently, but actually people still call starch powder “Katakuri Powder” although everybody knows starch is not made from Katakuri anymore. It remains the name of the starch powder in Japan.

Today, nobody uses the plant, people just enjoy seeing the lovable small flowers as a reminder of the origin of starch powder during their hiking in forests.