{"id":3126,"date":"2026-04-03T14:22:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T05:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/?p=3126"},"modified":"2026-04-03T15:43:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T06:43:20","slug":"mokuren-sakura-goyang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/en\/blog\/mokuren-sakura-goyang\/","title":{"rendered":"White Magnolia Found at Ilsan Lake Park | Discovering One of the Oldest Flowers on Earth in Cherry Blossom Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next weekend, the scenery at Ilsan Lake Park will completely change.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a BTS concert at a nearby stadium, and this quiet park will surely be filled with people.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly why I like this brief moment of stillness before it all begins.<\/p>\n

The cherry blossoms have already started to bloom.
\nEven so, many buds still remain.<\/p>\n

I find something special in this \u201cjust a little more\u201d time before full bloom, walking through it.<\/p>\n

I had my camera ready and casually shifted my gaze.<\/p>\n

What caught my eye wasn\u2019t the cherry blossoms.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

A sense of strangeness called white magnolia<\/h3>\n

White magnolias were blooming toward the sky, each flower seeming to carry its own will.

\"\"<\/center> They lack the flamboyance of cherry blossoms. And yet, there is a strange \u0642\u0648\u0629 that makes it hard to look away.<\/p>\n

As I watched them for a while, I suddenly felt a sense of dissonance.<\/p>\n

This flower somehow feels like it doesn\u2019t belong to \u201cthe present.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

One of the oldest flowers on Earth<\/h3>\n

When I looked it up\u2014<\/p>\n

This white magnolia is said to be \u201cone of the oldest flowering plants on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has survived for about 95 million years, since the age of dinosaurs,
\nwith almost no change in its form.<\/p>\n

It never needed to evolve into something else.
\nPerhaps that means it was already complete from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

Ninety-five million years ago and now are connected in the same form.<\/p>\n

Thinking that way, the flower in front of me begins to look a little different.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

A stillness that evokes the lotus<\/h3>\n

The name \u201cmokuren\u201d (magnolia) comes from its resemblance to the lotus.<\/p>\n

The lotus, which blooms pure from the mud, holds symbolic meaning in Buddhism.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

There is a quietness in this white magnolia that feels somehow removed from the mundane world.<\/p>\n

Why does it captivate without being flashy?
\nPerhaps it is less about beauty, and closer to \u201cmeaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Another kind of flower: cherry blossoms<\/h3>\n

Cherry blossoms, on the other hand, are entirely different.<\/p>\n

For example, Somei Yoshino\u2014the variety we often see today\u2014
\nis said to have been cultivated by human hands and spread from Japan.<\/p>\n

They are meant to be seen by people,
\nblooming all at once and falling in the same way.<\/p>\n

Even their uniformity has been shaped into a form of beauty.<\/p>\n

If magnolias are \u201cflowers that did not change,\u201d
\nthen cherry blossoms might be called \u201cflowers that have continued to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center> <\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

Which flower are we closer to?<\/h3>\n

As I watch people walking through the park, I find myself wondering\u2014<\/p>\n

Some look refined,
\nwhile others seem somehow elusive.<\/p>\n

There are people like cherry blossoms,
\nand people like magnolias.<\/p>\n

So, which one am I closer to?<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next weekend, the scenery at Ilsan Lake Park will completely change. There\u2019s a BTS concert at a nearby stadium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/?p=3105","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","en-US"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3126"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3139,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions\/3139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}