so uh...in the spirit of ultra sumo's upcoming release...i decided to look at some art of hau. because who doesn't love that precious lil boy????

but anyway, i conducted the search with his japanese name, not his english name. what i found surprised me.

aside from the glorious fan art (one of which became my new home/lock screens on my phone), i found a bunch of hibiscus intermingled with the artwork.

i was seriously confuzzled.

so, i do a lil research...and lo and behold:

hau is a true hibiscus and a member of the mallow family.

thus suggesting two things: he and mallow could very well be cousins (cause hau's hair isn't black. it's actually a VERY saturated olive green) and on top of that, he is in fact polynesian.

as a flower, hau (hibiscus tiliaceus) is native to polynesia and micronesia, and is well-loved in asian countries because bonsai. what makes it even cooler is that this bush is also used in the crafting of the outrigged canoes traditional to the people of polynesia. does the design on his shorts mean something now? (also, yes, the most common color seen in this flower is yellow, hence hau's yellow-dominant color scheme)

let's get a lil deeper, huh?

so...i keep looking, realizing that mallow is the common name of a genus of flowers. trial captain mallow may be an island mallow...though those are apparently native to california, not polynesia. but you know what the official name of this genus is?

malva.

sound familiar?

it should. malva of the kalos elite four is a bull mallow/french mallow. (same flower, different names) why she's a fire type specialist instead of being a grass specialist like her name may lead you to believe, i have no clue.

also, diantha's a flower. her name is a corruption of dianthus, a really pretty flower part of a completely different family.

but uh, back to alola.

as if it wasn't obvious enough, lillie is some kind of lily. but did you know that gladion is too?? you heard me right. gladion is a corruption of "gladiolus", a very pretty flower also known as a "sword lily".

moving on to the player characters, since the names don't imply much of anything, this is based purely off of design.

take a look at the male player character from sun and moon's default outfit. does that blue on his shirt remind you of anything?

m o r n i n g  g l o r i e s

makes sense when you realize that in the manga, he's addressed as sun.

and then there's moon's design. i realize that the yellow isn't exact, but it could still be a possibility:

e v e n i n g  p r i m r o s e s

so, in short, our holy quintet is:

a true hibiscus (hau)

a lily (lillie)

a sword lily (gladion)

a morning glory (sun)

and an evening primrose (moon)

in short; practically everyone's a plant