A week ago, in search of an extremely rare flower called the tagimoucia (pronounced tahng-ee-mow-theea), I travelled to Taveuni – Fiji’s “Garden Island“. The tagimoucia is Fiji’s endemic and elusive national flower, as well as one of the rarest flowers on Earth. Its bright crimson and white petals grow in clusters, and from a young age, all Fijians are taught that the disparate colours symbolise a beautiful but tragic love story between two disparate people – a sort of Fijian Romeo and Juliet that has captured the country’s imagination.
Yet while the tagimoucia features prominently in Fijian folk and popular culture, many Fijians may have only seen the bloom in pictures – in 2013, an image of the tagimoucia was used to replace Queen Elizabeth II on the front of the Fijian 50-dollar note. Of Fiji’s 330 islands, the tagimoucia only grows on Taveuni, and it’s only found on a mountain ridge beside a difficult-to-access, high-altitude lake, where it blooms for less than three months of the year.
Because of its uniqueness, the tagimoucia has come to be seen by Fijians as something of a national treasure as well as a symbol of good luck and fortune. On graduation days in Suva, the flower is commonly requested by high school and university students, who place it in their graduation garlands. In 2021, Fijian pop star KKU devoted an entire song to the tagimoucia, and the music video shows him travelling to Taveuni in search of the flower before dancing on the beach with it behind his ears.
I first heard of the tagimoucia while searching for the most challenging trek in Fiji and was immediately intrigued. So, after a few days on Fiji’s second island of Vanua Levu to get over my jetlag, I set out in search of this most elusive plant.