(Purple orchids from my sister’s garden. Photography by my son Marco. Mmmm…. this is really getting to be a  family collaborated blog….) 

I was named after a flower, maybe that’s why I love flowers. The truth is, I didn’t exactly know how this particular flower looks like until I searched it here.  It may be real, or it may be just a figment of a fertile poet’s imagination. But what I gather is that it used to grow on riverbanks… yes, a wildflower. Like any  flower, I believe it is beautiful, as it was described the  “rival of the rose”. Well, I have reason to be proud of my name therefore.

THE RHODORA by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In May, when seawinds pierced our solitude,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being;

Why thou were there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew;

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

— ON BEING ASKED WHENCE IS THE FLOWER: The Rhodora is a flowering shrub of the rhondodendron family, the blossom of which is rose tinged with purple. (Source: Literature for Philippine High Schools, Fourth Year by Carolyn Fosdick and Trinidad Tarrosa Subido)