Why Is a Flower That Lasts a Day Called the ‘Endless Flower’? The Story Behind the Mugunghwa’s Name

A single mugunghwa (rose of Sharon) flower usually opens in the morning and folds up by evening. Yet its Korean name, mugung (無窮), means “without end.” Why would a flower that fades within a day be called the “endless flower”? The question is not new. Some 800 years ago, scholars in Goryeo-era Korea argued over the same name.

This article first looks at the naming debate preserved in old texts, then uses figures from a Korean cultivation study to separate the time of one flower from the time of the whole shrub. Once the two are distinguished, the puzzle of a short-lived flower with a long name begins to resolve.

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The name was already debated 800 years ago

The collected works of the Goryeo scholar Yi Gyu-bo (1168–1241), Dongguk Isangguk Jip, record an argument over the flower’s name. According to the preface to one of his poems, two men, the elder Mun and Bak Hwan-go, disagreed about the name of the mugunghwa (槿花). One said the name was mugung written 無窮, meaning that the flower blooms and falls without end. The other said it was mugung written 無宮, meaning that a king of old loved the flower so much that the whole palace lost its luster beside it. Unable to settle the matter, each wrote a poem and asked Yi Gyu-bo to reply. [9]

The two names sound the same and differ only in their characters. In his reply, Yi treated the dispute as little more than wordplay and wrote that no one knew whose mouth the name had first come from. Then he offered his own reading: the flower blooms only briefly and cannot last even a day; people disliked how much that brevity resembled a fleeting human life, could not bear to watch it fall, and so called it “endless” instead. He then asked whether it could truly last without end. [9]

或云無窮　無窮之意　謂此花開落無窮
或云無宮　無宮之意　謂昔君王愛此花　而六宮無色
此花片時榮　尙欠一日久　……　反以無窮名
Part of Yi Gyu-bo’s poem and preface on the mugunghwa’s name. Original text from the Korean Classics Database; the readings in this article are GLU’s summary.

In short, by Yi Gyu-bo’s time the name mugung was already being passed along in speech in Goryeo, and there were three ways to read it: an observation that the flower blooms and falls without end, a story about a king’s affection, and an irony tinged with wishful thinking attached to a short-lived flower.

In Chinese poetry, too, the flower stood for brevity. The Tang poet Bai Juyi wrote in his “Speaking Freely” poems that the pine, though it lives a thousand years, rots in the end, while the rose of Sharon, blooming for a single day, has its own glory (松樹千年終是朽　槿花一日自爲榮). [10] The same flower, in other words, was inscribed with “one day” in one tradition and with “endlessness” in a name.

Earlier records mention the flower under another name. In a memorial that Choe Chi-won sent to the Tang emperor around 897, Silla is called Geunhwahyang (槿花鄕), “the land of the rose of Sharon.” He wrote it to thank the emperor for refusing a request from Balhae to be ranked above Silla. [12] The name mugunghwa written in the Korean alphabet appears in Hunmong Jahoe, a character primer compiled by Choe Se-jin in 1527. In its section on flowers, both 槿 (geun) and 蕣 (sun) are glossed as mugunghwa. [11]

What do “one day” and “100 days” actually measure?

North Carolina State University’s plant guide describes individual flowers of Hibiscus syriacus as lasting about a day. Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety, by contrast, says the mugunghwa in Korea blooms every day from early July to mid-October. The first description concerns one blossom; the second concerns the season when flowers can be seen on the shrub. Neither implies that a single blossom stays open for months. [1] [2]

A shrub appears to be constantly in bloom because many flowers open and close in succession. Even a single branch often carries flowers that have already folded, flowers in full bloom and buds that have not yet opened.

A cultivation study makes the distinction concrete. In a table of flowering characteristics recorded in Cheonan in 2012, Korean researchers reported the same range of individual flower longevity for rose of Sharon ‘Samchully’ and the interspecific hybrid ‘Daewangchun’, but different seasonal blooming durations. [3]

Selected values reorganized from Table 5 of Ha, Lim and Shim (2015). These results apply to the cultivation conditions in Cheonan. ‘Daewangchun’ is a hybrid of H. syriacus and H. sinosyriacus; its values should not be generalized to all rose of Sharon plants.

Flower counts give another sense of scale. The Korean ministry says a single mugunghwa shrub usually produces about 2,000 to 3,000 flowers. Dividing that number simply by a flowering season of about 100 days gives an average of 20 to 30 new flowers a day. Actual counts vary by shrub and by time of season, so this figure is only an average for gauging scale. [2]

The practical conclusion is straightforward: choosing a cultivar for long-lasting individual flowers is different from choosing one for a long flowering season. If you want prolonged garden color, check both traits in the cultivar description. The Korea Forest Service’s planting and management guide also addresses plant form with regard to branch development and flower-bud production, so consult such guidance for actual pruning according to the planting purpose and the plant’s condition. [8]

A flower closing and a flower falling are different events

Petals opening, folding or wilting, and eventually falling are stages worth recording separately. If petals close in the afternoon, that does not establish that the whole flower and its stalk detached at that moment. In particular, claiming that a plant sheds fresh flowers to prevent disease requires evidence comparing senescence and disease occurrence.

A 2009 study of floral senescence in H. syriacus examined the relationship between ethylene production before full bloom and the timing of senescence. Findings including accelerated senescence after ethylene treatment led the researchers to propose an important role for ethylene produced during flower opening. It is better supported to describe short flower life as a physiological process involving changes in petal tissues than as a simple housekeeping strategy. [4]

Nor is it accurate to assume that flowers of every single-flowered cultivar last one day and those of every double-flowered cultivar last three. A 2026 study of ‘Samilhong’ reports differences in longevity between single-flowered cultivars. Petal arrangement alone is insufficient to assign a lifespan without checking the cultivar and measurement conditions. [5]

Some rose of Sharon flowers have no red center

The red central marking is commonly called dansim in Korean. But it is not present in every rose of Sharon. The Korean ministry distinguishes groups including those with a red center and the Baedal group, while the Royal Horticultural Society describes ‘Diana’ as having pure white single flowers. [2] [6]

When watching insects, distinguish a flower visit from successful pollination. An insect entering the center of a flower does not by itself prove that pollen reached a stigma. Record whether the visitor touches the center and which parts make contact during its stay; those details make an observation more informative.

Three visits to check whether it is yesterday’s flower

If you want to distinguish individual blossoms from flowering across a shrub for yourself, you can follow the procedure below. It is a recording method for readers, not a report of field measurements made by GLU, and photographs allow the comparison without picking flowers or attaching markers to branches.

1. First morning: Choose a branch at eye level and photograph it with the branch junction and leaves visible. Mark flowers and buds A, B and C on a copy of the photograph.
2. Late afternoon the same day: Photograph from the same direction. Record separately whether A’s petals are open or folded and whether they remain attached.
3. The next morning: Locate A again using branch junctions and leaf positions. The key is not to mistake newly opened B for A. If A is still open because of its cultivar, continue observing.

If a flower folded between visits, you know only that the change happened within that interval. One or two visits cannot give an exact lifespan in hours or the total number of flowers in a season.

National symbolism and native range answer different questions

Songs did much to fix the mugunghwa as the flower that represents Korea. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety explains that the flower became even more beloved after the anthem’s refrain “mugunghwa samcheolli hwaryeo gangsan” (the rose of Sharon over three thousand li of splendid rivers and mountains), and the National Archives of Korea notes that the flower already appeared in the anthem sung at the 1896 foundation-stone ceremony for Independence Gate. Today the mugunghwa is used in the emblems of state institutions such as the presidential emblem, the badge of National Assembly members and the court mark. [2] [13]

Its status as the national flower, however, is not set by law. In a 2017 newsletter, the National Archives of Korea noted that the mugunghwa, unlike the national flag, is not a symbol fixed by statute, and that bills to codify it as the national flower had been introduced several times but were still pending at that point. [13] The fact that Japan’s cherry blossom is not a legally designated national flower either is covered in “Is the Cherry Blossom Japan’s National Flower?”

Being a national flower and being native to a particular place are also different questions. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s Plants of the World Online currently lists southern China and Taiwan as the native range of H. syriacus and Korea among the areas where it has been introduced. That is the botanical checklist’s assessment of distribution and does not negate the plant’s long cultural significance in Korea. The epithet syriacus alone should therefore not be treated as proof of a Syrian origin, nor should national-flower status be taken to mean that it is a species endemic to Korea. [7]

Rereading “blooms and falls without end”

One of Yi Gyu-bo’s two friends thought the mugunghwa blooms and falls without end; Yi thought the name was a wish attached to a one-day flower. Read against today’s cultivation records, the two were looking at different scales. As a single flower, it hardly lasts beyond a day, just as Yi said. As a whole shrub, thousands of flowers open one after another over roughly three months, showing an “endlessness” worthy of the name.

Separating the time of one flower from the time of the whole shrub shows that a short-lived blossom and a long name do not contradict each other. The way flowers that open and fade each day follow one another without a break is a small example of the intricate design in a familiar part of God’s creation.

References

1. NC State Extension: Hibiscus syriacus — Individual flowers, form and fruit.
2. Ministry of the Interior and Safety: National Flower Mugunghwa (in Korean) — Flowering season in Korea, 2,000–3,000 flowers per shrub, flower groups, the anthem and state emblems.
3. Ha, Lim & Shim (2015): Development of a New Hibiscus Cultivar ‘Daewangchun’ — Table 5: Cheonan observations in 2012.
4. Seo et al. (2009): Effects of various chemical agents and early ethylene production on floral senescence — Research abstract on ethylene and floral senescence.
5. Ha et al. (2026): Hibiscus syriacus ‘Samilhong’ — Longevity differences between single-flowered cultivars.
6. Royal Horticultural Society: Hibiscus syriacus ‘Diana’ — Description of a pure-white, single-flowered cultivar.
7. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Plants of the World Online — Accepted name and native versus introduced distribution.
8. Korea Forest Service: Mugunghwa Planting and Management Guide (in Korean) — Page 52: plant form, branch development and flower buds.
9. Korean Classics Database: Yi Gyu-bo, Dongguk Isangguk Jeonjip, vol. 14, poem on Elder Mun and Bak Hwan-go’s debate over the mugunghwa (in Korean) — Preface on the 無窮/無宮 debate, original text and translation (Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics).
10. Wikisource: Bai Juyi, “Speaking Freely, Five Poems” (Complete Tang Poems, vol. 438) (in Chinese) — The fifth poem’s line on the one-day rose of Sharon.
11. Wikisource: Choe Se-jin, Hunmong Jahoe, flower section (in Korean) — The gloss mugunghwa for 槿 and 蕣.
12. Korean Classics Database: Choe Chi-won, Goun Jip, vol. 1, memorial of thanks for refusing to rank Balhae above Silla (in Korean) — The passage calling Silla 槿花鄕.
13. National Archives of Korea Newsletter No. 92 (2017): The Mugunghwa, National Flower (in Korean) — A national flower not fixed by law, the 1896 anthem and the Geunhwahyang record.

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