Hi Wolviex,
Speaking as a botanist, I doubt you're not going to get much clue from the flowers. The flowers on the guard (left to right) could be something in the poppy or barberry family, something in the sunflower family (such as a chrysanthemum) and again something in the poppy or barberry family. The leaves could be chrysanthemum, fern, or whatever. The flowers on the handle are essentially abstract designs.
Basically, my first guess is that we have someone who's botanically illiterate looking at illustrations in an art book and copying them onto the guard and hilt in a pleasing pattern. I have nothing against that, of course (it's art!), but it's useless as a clue. The reason is that the sunflower family is one of the three biggest plant families in the world, and they grow on every landmass north of Antartica (think dandelions--actually, they're probably around MacMurdo Station, too). Poppy relatives and barberries are found throughout the northern hemisphere, and certainly both are in gardens throughout Asia and Europe. Here I'm assuming that the numbers of petals, and the shape of the center of the flower, are meaningful. They could just as easily be sloppiness on the part of the artist. For instance, all of these could be someone's "Hollywood treatment" of roses.
Fundamentally, most of the same plant families occur in northern Asia (China, Korea, Japan), Europe, and north America. A good clue would be a well executed, recognizable flower that's indigenous to some area, or symbolically meaningful in an area (think lotus or rose, for instance), or something tropical (like a ginger) that would provide a clue to tropical SE Asia (or that someone saw a picture of said plant
).
Pretty blade, though.
Fearn