I don’t even know that the plant where canola oil came from have flowers and those flowers can be tourist attraction. Canola flower called nanohana in Japanese is one of the spring flowers in bright yellow color. The plant was developed from rapeseed cultivars of Brassica napusa and Brassica rapa by Canadian researchers from the University of Manitoba as a substitute to rapeseed plant in the early 1970s. The name itself was an abbreviation of Canada as “Can” and “OLA ” meaning “Oil, low acid”. Rapeseed oil extract has an unacceptable distinctive taste, greenish color due to chlorophyll and contains a high concentration of erucic acid.

So when a friend invited me to go to a canola flower field, I immediate said yes. The place is in the Ebeotsu district of the city of Takikawa in Hokkaido. The weather and soil in those areas were very suitable for the plant resulting to Takikawa being the home for the largest canola flower field in Japan. There are now more than 60 canola flower fields in Takikawa.

The canola flowers go to full bloom from mid to late May. So at this time, a lot of visitors including us come to visit the bright yellow fields of nanohana.