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Daisetsuzan NP, Hokkaido
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A small rush on Mount Furanodake turned out to be Luzula tundricola, a plant previously unrecorded in Japan. Researchers identified it from tiny differences in its leaves, hairs and flower clusters.
The pass between Mount Furanodake and Mae-Furanodake was an Ainu winter route and a deer migration trail. In 1858, explorer Takeshiro Matsuura crossed it with 12 Ainu guides on his way toward Tokachi.
On that spring expedition, Matsuura recorded travelers gathering butterbur shoots, or fuki-no-tō, and eating them dressed as a salad. He noted that Hokkaido’s shoots were less bitter than those in Honshu.
A recorded Ainu name for Mount Furanodake is オッチシペンサイウシベ, interpreted as “the mountain always standing ahead on the upper-river side of the pass”—a name that points to its position by the saddle.
Mount Furanodake is one of writer Sumie Tanaka’s Flower 100 Mountains. Her 1980 book paired it with Hakusan-ichige, a white alpine anemone—not lavender, the crop many people associate with Furano.
Even after the main bloom, a park ranger and volunteers recorded more than 50 alpine plant species on an August 5, 2021 visit. Long-leaved northern thistle and Tokachi geranium covered the slopes.
That August flower patrol was also a mission to control invasive European bumblebees. Volunteers found none that day, while native bumblebees were busy pollinating the mountain’s thistles.
