Recently, on 15 November 2013, Thailand issued National Flowers of
ASEAN sheet depicting national flowers of the ASEAN countries. These
are listed below:
- The Simpor (Dilenia Suffruticosa) of Brunei Darussalam
- The Rumdul (Mitrella Mesnyl) of Camdodia
- The Moon Orchard (Phalaenopsis Amabilis) of Indonesia
- The Dok Champa (Plumeria) of Laos
- The Five-petaled Bunga Raya (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis) of Malaysia
- The Padauk (Pterocarpus Indicus) of Myanmar
- The Sampaguita Jasmine (Arabian Jasmine) of Philippines
- The Orchid (Vanda Miss Joaquim) of Singapore
- The Ratchaphruek (Cassia Fistula Linn) of Thailand and
- The Lotus of Vietnam.
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| The Padauk of Myanmar |
But, earlier than that, on 15 August 2013, China Post issued a stamp
featuring national flowers of China and ASEAN to commemorate CAEXPO
(China-ASEAN Expo). On that stamp, some of you may be wondering where
is the Padauk flower and you may assume some yellow flowers could be
Padauk. The Thailand's Ratchaphruek look similar to Padauk, but
actually not.
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| The National Flowers of China and ASEAN |
China Post featured "Lxora Chinensis" as National Flower of Myanmar.
The maximum card, produced by China Post, is the best proof of their
assumption. It clearly stated that "Bearing red flowers that bloom in
most of the seasons of the year, the Lxora Chinensis, national flower of
Myanmar is the symbol of good luck and peace". The card is
pre-stamped, valued 80 Yuan.
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| The Maxicard |
So, what is the true national flower of Myanmar? Some believe that
Padauk and Thazin orchid are the national flowers and some argued that
Thazin is the state flower of Rakhine, not the national flower as the
whole country. According to my knowledge, there is no official National
Flower of Myanmar, declared by States Constitution or any other laws
(may notify me if you have some information about this). The 2008
States Consitution defines the National Anthem, National Emblem,
National Flag and Capitol. The first month of the Burmese traditional
lunar calendar starts from April, when Padauk flowers are bloomsom. The
girls and ladies love to put the padauk flowers on their hairbum during
the New Year Festival. And the Padauk are offered to Buddha as well.
That could be the reasons most of the people believe the Padauk to be
the national flower. Traditionally, Burmese defined 12 different
flowers as seasonal and festival flowers of Myanmar.
- Tagu (Mar - Apr) ~ Gantgaw, Yinkhat
- Kasone (Apr - May) ~ Sagar
- Nayone (May - Jun) ~ Sabae, Mulay
- Waso (Jun - Jul) ~ Ponenyet
- Wakhaung (Jul - Aug) ~ Kuttar
- Tawthalin (Aug - Sep) ~ Yinmar
- Thadinkyut (Sep - Oct) ~ Kyar
- Tansaungmone (Oct - Nov) ~ Kawae
- Nattaw (Nov - Dec) ~ Thazin
- Pyartho (Dec - Jan) ~ Kwar Nyo
- Dapotwe (Jan - Feb) ~ Pauklel
- Tabaung (Feb - Mar) ~ Ingyin, Tharaphee
But,
these are just seasonal flowers and not the national flowers. To be
concluded, this two stamps are contradicting and Myanma Post and
Telecommunication needs to have specific policy relating to national
identity of Myanmar. The ministry needs to coordinate with foreign
postal authorities to make sure they use the true national identity of
Myanmar.
References:
To reference this article, please cite:
Toe Kyaw Kyar,
"What is the National Flower of Myanmar?",
The Burma Fantail, Vol. 11,
No. 3, Whole Number 41, pp. 37-39, July 2014.
This article is cited by the following article(s) or book(s):
ေက်ာ္ျမင့္ေမာင္၊ ျမန္မာစာပို႔တံဆိပ္ေခါင္းမ်ား၊ တာမိုးညဲစာေပ၊ ၂၀၁၉။
