Count Your Blessings!

With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine Yim

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Count The Garden By The Flowers, Never By The Leaves That Fall.
Count Your Life With Smiles And Not The Tears That Roll.
..... Author unknown.

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Malaysian Flora USDA Zone 11
Welcome to our exotic world of everlasting summers and tropical rainforests!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Asian Foxtail Uraria crinita


This native plant of tropical Asia and Australia has multiple 'identities', having a different name in different cultures.

Common name: Asian foxtail
Malay name: Ekor Anjing (dog's tail), Ekor Kucing (cat's tail)
Chinese name: 兔尾草 (rabbit's tail grass)
Java name: buntut anjing (dog's bottom) *

Which common name do you like?

* Post publication update: In Malaysia, buntut is commonly used to mean 'bottom' while in Indonesia, buntut means tail. So, I think there is an error in my translation and that it is more correct to use 'Dog's Tail' since the term originated from Java.


The flowers come in clusters in shades of violet, pink and white. Yes, 3 different colours here!

Scientific name: Uraria crinita
Family: Fabaceae
Origin: Tropical Asia
Photographs taken by Autumn Belle at The Secret Garden of 1-Utama
Grateful thanks to Dr. Francis Ng


The plant can be found in the jungles of Southern China and Southeast Asia, hence it is a native plant of Malaysia.

The roots, leaves and flowers have medicinal uses. In Chinese herbalogy, it is used to stop bleeding, reduce fever and relieve cough symptoms.

Have you see this plant before? Anyone has this plant in Florida or other parts of the world?

My post today is dedicated to Carmen from Germany of "Între vis si realitate" (between dream and reality) blog. Thank you for being the first commenter of my previous post on the Australian Willow.



This is my entry for Today's Flowers # 90. My grateful thanks to the TF folks: Santilli, Denise, Pupo and Valkyrien for hosting Today's Flowers. To participate or view other floral displays around the world, click here.

34 comments:

  1. What an unusual lovely flower. I love the name Asian Foxtail.

    FlowerLady

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  2. I like all the common names except dog's bottom. This interesting plant does not grow where I live, so it's new to me. The bloom does look a little bit like our lilac.

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  3. Hello,

    Isn't it interesting how one plant can have so many different common names? I can see why botanical names are so important. I do think it looks like foxtail :-)

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  4. I think foxtail suits it best, but then again it also looks like a bunny tail towards the end of the flowering. Just anything but dog's bottom.

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  5. We have a saying; 'a dear child has many names'. Fits to this plant I think, I think I would go for the name foxtail, the last picture even has the right colors :)

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  6. This is a beautiful flower. I think both 兔尾草 and Foxtail fit it very well.

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  7. I like the Asian Foxtail tag. Dog's bottom will make me look extra hard at the fancy dog !!!

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  8. Love your Today's Flower posts, as I learn a lot from these. Thank you :)

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  9. I am very pleased and honored dear Autumn belle!such a great surprise!
    Your garden is wonderful!I need to visit your garden :)
    I'm delighted to meet you
    Have a nice day!

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  10. My favorite is the Asian Foxtail and I love the purple color.

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  11. Thank you for posting the pictures and Information of Uraria crinita.
    Thank you for sharing!!
    Love to read and learn,
    Gisela

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  12. I think I have seen this flowers because I come from the Philippines. I like the name asian foxtail! Happy Sunday!

    Today‘s Flowers~Orchid

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  13. I like the name Asian Foxtail best. Whatever its name, I like the blossoms!

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  14. They are such lovely blooms. Great shots.

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  15. aloha autumn belle,

    love the asian foxtail, haven't seen that before!

    did i ever invite you to my hot, lout and proud meme at the end of every month?

    here's the last one, hope you can join us for the end of the month....

    http://aplantfanatic.blogspot.com/2010/03/hot-loud-and-proud.html

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  16. I've yet to come across this flower here, got to look for it!

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  17. Autumn Belle, i haven't seen it either. Your "kuching" term is "kuting" in Pilipino or Tagalog which means young cat; while "buntut" is "buntot" which means tail.

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  18. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for the visit and sweet words. Actually I find this flower unique and fanciful too. The name itself intriquing.

    Noel, I'll wish to take part in the words of inspiration too.

    Andrea, you make me lol and smile. Your talalog term for buntot is tail, which is so mild and innocent. Here, we also use buntut to mean somebody's bottom, which is quite embarassing, haha. I just did a google search and found that the Indonesian term for ox tail soup is 'Sop Buntut'. So, now I realise 'buntut' is used widely to mean 'tail' too. So I will update my post regarding the 'dog's bottom' and 'dog tail'.

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  19. What a very unique flower, never seen one like that before...
    Beautiful...

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  20. Asian foxtail sounds nice..lovely flowers tQ.

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  21. very unique flowers...

    Thanks for dropping by :)

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  22. I like the Asian Foxtail name and I have seen these before. They are so beautiful and your pictures are amazing.

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  23. A fabulous flower and all wonderful photographs. Thanks for sharing these beautiful blooms.

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  24. Very pretty :-) I think it looks most like a fox tail, but love to hear what people around the world call this plant!

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  25. I have never seen this plant before but I think the name Asian Foxtail seems to fit it very well. I would just call it beautiful.

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  26. wow, a flower with 4 different animals' name attached to it :D I didn't know about this type of plant, actually.. It looks very interesting, and useful too:)

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  27. It does look like a tail! But it is no doubt a nice flower.

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  28. Well, I guess it looks like SOME kind of tail, huh? It's a really pretty flower. I've definitely not seen it around here (Mid-atlantic).

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  29. Such a unique and pretty foxtail flower. A grand color...not too intense and sorta delicate.

    Thanks for the information.

    Rosey

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  30. Hmmm it's a lovely thing. Uraria crinita grows here in Hong Kong as well, I saw one today in the Country Park. Im eyeing it for seed so i can grow some in the garden. There seems to be a few colour variations in U. crinita, the one I saw today was very much darker, solid purple and the leaves had bright lime green attractive marbling markings.
    I think Dogs Tail is a good nick name. Once the flowers fall off that's what it looks like, and remains so for a long time. We dont have foxes in Asia or SEA so foxtail is a wee bit exotic for locals. Its not commonly planted in gardens anywhere outside Asia. In Taiwan it's grown as a vegetable supposedly also having medicinal properties too.

    I can't say that at any stage does it looks like a dogs anus, though! LO maybe the bud looks a bit like dog poo? No idea. To me it looks a lot like a lupin, a tree lupin in this case as the scant bush does look like a small tree.

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  31. I found also this foxtail grows a lot in my backyard, We call this "Buntut kucing".

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  32. I like 🐕 tail .And Medicinal uses

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  33. There are three in my work place initially but one died off eventually after the leafs eaten by the goose. I first noticed it when I saw the unique variegated leaf. Later the flower is another surprise as it is a beautiful purple fluffy flower. It just grows wild in the farm and my attempt to propagate it with its seed so far had failed twice. Well the name “ Asian Foxtail” fits the outlook of the flower well as dogs or cats tail won’t be so fluffy. It’s so precious to me and till today they are still my favourite among all other plants I have in the farm.

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Words are like the voice of the heart... Confucius

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