Cover news reporter Liu Kexin
Plum blossoms, the most common imagery in ancient Chinese poetry, have attracted poets from all dynasties to sing their pride in bravery against the cold. Therefore, there are countless plum blossom famous sentences that have been passed down through the world. "The shadow is shallow and shallow, and the dark fragrance floats at dusk." "There is no rhyme in the incense, and the qingji does not know the cold." These verses depict the charm of plum blossoms from both form and god.
But wax plums and plum blossoms, but two completely different plants, on closer examination, do you know whether these verses are written about plum blossoms or wax plums? The cover news invited the popular science writer Sun Hai, the second explanation of the "plum blossom archives".
Palace pink type plum blossoms
Lu You: I love plum blossoms, but I don't fully understand it
"At the same time as Mei, I seem to be more curious for the evaluation." Hundreds of years ago, Xun Xiucai had given Lu You ten wax plums. This "plum blossom lover" of the Southern Song Dynasty was very surprised by the aroma of wax plums, so he left "Xun Xiucai Sent Ten Branches of Wax Plums to Give This Poem". Who knows, the opening two sentences are actually half wrong, which attracts posterity to watch every year when the plum blossoms are blooming.
Sun Hai introduced that the wax plum is a plant of the wax plum genus of the wax plum family, and the plum blossom is a plum plant of the Rosaceae family, which is naturally not "homologous". In addition, the opening of wax plums and plum blossoms is not "simultaneous": "Wax plums and plum blossoms open one after the other. Wax plums are found in both the north and south of China and are more hardy, and the Yao Remnants call wax plums 'cold guests'. Blooming in the early winter, blooming before spring, also known as winter plum, because of the first hundred flowers, it is also called early plum. The plum blossom is native to southern China, it is extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, and the warm and humid southern region is the most suitable living environment for plum blossoms. The plum blossom is the first of the twenty-four trade winds, and the plum blossom means the arrival of spring. ”
So how do we tell whether the poet is writing about wax plums or plum blossoms? Sun Hai offers a way to distinguish between title, fragrance and color.
"Fan Chengda, a Southern Song Dynasty poet who was the prefect of Chengdu, wrote in the Plum Spectrum: 'Wax plum, fragrant and fragrant, too much plum'. It can be seen that compared with plum blossoms, the fragrance of wax plums is more intense. At the same time, the flower color of the wax plum is goose yellow, Li Shangyin once wrote 'where to whisk the chest butterfly powder, when to paint the forehead through the bee yellow', Huang Tingjian also had a verse of 'Wenjun Temple's wild plum hair, fragrant and dyed into palace-like yellow'. But Sun Hai also said, "In the Tang Dynasty, the ancients did not distinguish between wax plums and plum blossoms, calling wax plums yellow plums or early plums. ”
However, it is not difficult to distinguish between wax plums and plum blossoms by the strong aroma.
Wax plum
Real plum blossoms: fragrant, very fragrant, very fragrant
Lu You left behind more than a hundred poems of Yongmei in his lifetime, many of which were left in Shudi. Presumably, chengdu people are very familiar with his "when I walked to the west of Jincheng, I was drunk like mud for plum blossoms." Twenty miles of incense continue, Qingyang Palace to Huanhua Creek. "Maybe you think that the only thing that can achieve "twenty miles of incense" is the wax plum. However, Sun Hai told reporters that when the land tour is galloping, what you see along the way should be plum blossoms.
"Fan Chengda, the envoy of Sichuan and the prefect of Chengdu, came to the Fanghua Building near the Hejiang Pavilion in Jinjiang, and once looked at Meilin, which stretched for twenty miles, and later he wrote in the "Wu Chuanlu": 'The green field is flat forest, the smoke and water are far away, very similar to Jiangnan. Above the pavilion is the Fanghua Building, and there are many plums planted before and after. When Lu You was galloping by the river, he crossed the same Merlin. ”
In fact, in the ornamental plum blossoms, there is a group of plum blossoms can also have such a strong aroma.
"Ornamental plum blossoms are divided into three groups of true plum, apricot plum and cherry plum plum according to the kinship between plum varieties. Only the ornamental plum blossoms of the true plum line are plum varieties selected from the ancient Chinese species of plum, and the plum is the only parent and has not penetrated the genes of other species. That is to say, only the plum blossoms of the true plum family can be regarded as real plums, and this branch is the blood of the plum blossoms," Sun Hai explained, "The most important characteristics of this real plum blossom are incense, very fragrant, very fragrant." ”
Jade butterfly type plum blossom
Sun Hai said that there are many varieties of plum blossoms in the true plum system, which can be roughly divided into seven types according to the standards of flower type, flower color, calyx color, etc. Among them, there is also a kind of plum blossom, which can show the appearance of wild river plums thousands of years ago.
Plum is a flower and tree native to China and has a history of more than 3,000 years. It originally grew on the shores of mountain streams in the south, so it is also known as "Jiangmei". Sun Hai told reporters that among the varieties of plum blossoms now, the Plum-type Plum Blossom can also show the style of wild plum blossoms from a thousand years ago. "Jiangmei-type plum blossoms are single-petaled, each flower has five petals, the petals are round, white, pink and other monochromatic, calyx purple and green, with a pleasant fragrance."
Cinnabar-shaped plum blossoms
Chinese's love for plum blossoms has begun since the Han Dynasty. According to the "Miscellaneous Records of Xijing", "At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the forest garden was repaired, and each of the famous fruits and trees in the distance was dedicated, and there were Zhu Mei and Yu Fat Plum. "In the Tang Dynasty, there were already Jiangmei type and palace powder type plum blossoms, and a new cinnabar-type variety of that time also appeared in Shudi, which was called "red plum". In the Song Dynasty, green calyx-type, jade butterfly-shaped plum blossoms and so on also began to appear.
Green calyx-shaped plum blossoms
"The green calyx-shaped plum blossoms are white and fragrant, so named because the sepals are green. The petals of the palace pink plum blossom are compound or heavy petals, dark or light pink, the flower fragrance is rich and clear, and it is also the most abundant population of ornamental plum blossoms. The petals of the cinnabar-shaped plum blossom are compound petals, from peach to purple, stacked in multiple layers, the filigree is reddish, and it also has a pleasant fragrance, "Speaking of the appearance of plum blossoms, Sun Hai is like a number of family treasures.
Spanning hundreds of years, the piece of Merlin from Qingyang Palace to Huanhuaxi may no longer be the one that Lu You saw, but Meixiang overflowed from Lu You's poems, from Qingyang Palace to Huanhua Creek, and then floated all over the historical ancient city of Chengdu.