In "Idle Love And Occasional Mail", Li Yu regards Daffodil as his own life: "There are four lives, each division is a moment: spring is destined for daffodils and orchids..." Although I am not so exaggerated, but the new spring case can not be less than daffodils, this is a must for my family to make offerings. Narcissus ice is clean and jade, elegant and fragrant, which is simply a representative of the wind of Chinese gentlemen. However, did you know that Narcissus may have come from the West?
One
Affected by the epidemic, the transport of daffodils from Zhangzhou to the north this winter was blocked, and the quality was not good and the price was high. When the epidemic prevention and control in the community where I lived was lifted, it was the twenty-third day of the Waxing Moon, and I quickly went to the flower shop to pick up a few daffodils to send to my father-in-law. He politely said "thank you", but I knew that looking at the ordinary goods under the roots of these years— this daffodil leaf hybrid, the flower buds were thin and weak and a little pinched arrows — he was not satisfied!
Zhangzhou Narcissus (Xinhua Photo)
When the father-in-law was young, he liked to raise flowers. Every year, when he fast-forwards to the Waxing Moon, he always has to go to the flower cellar by himself after busy work, carefully select the three-year-old pile daffodil head that is full of strength, and take it home to carve himself. The Narcissus bulbs, which were started in advance, are also wrapped in brown dry skin, and are no different from onions in the characteristics of bulbs. It is inconspicuous, but how many flower arrows can be felt completely by a pair of hands. During the 30 days at home, the father-in-law had to create a chic crab daffodil. The carved leaves are rolled up like crab claws, and the flower stems are straight and neatly arranged. The father-in-law has to soak, carve, remove the mucus, and trim the leaves for the bulbs, and the mother-in-law is happy to be a good assistant: sunbathe them, control the temperature, change the roots of clean cotton... The husband and wife file can even ensure that the daffodils are broken before, not sooner nor later.
The "crab daffodils" they raised are the most desired gifts for relatives and friends during the Spring Festival. Not only because this is a limited edition of the best product, but also because it is full of the painstaking efforts and aesthetic taste of the flower keepers who serve flowers every day after work and between busy years, and the spirit of the dual-career families at the end of the 20th century.
My father didn't raise flowers, nor did he understand flowers. Although he studied fine arts, he mainly painted Chinese objects. After I got married, every Spring Festival, my father-in-law would give my father a pot of the best daffodils. But the flowers in the hands of my parents, always not well controlled, every year the father-in-law will "remote control" guidance: if the flowers are about to bloom before the Chinese New Year's Eve, then pour the water at night, move the flower pots to the balcony with a lower temperature; if it is almost the day and there is no movement, then add a little warm water, or put it on the radiator at night; if the flower buds are bulging but cannot stand out, then use scissors to cut the flower clothes a little "midwifery"... Things in the world are like this, if it is easy to get, it is difficult to experience fun, only if you have spent your own thoughts, you will really fall in love.
Narcissus mentioned in the text (courtesy of the author)
Gradually, my parents also became interested: in the Spring Festival, the ink fragrance on my father's paintings was always added with the sweetness of daffodils. Father's notes and poems also have a lot of words related to Narcissus, such as "Han Xiang Lonely Moving Ice Muscle", "Every Heart Washes Away the Fragrant Shadow", etc., all of which express the noble and lonely qualities of Daffodil Lingbo. Later, my father also broke through the restriction of not painting flowers, specially painted an elegant daffodil for his father-in-law, and inscribed "cold summer sleep, a sleep for a year, jade exquisite, people call to be immortals, fragrant and full of fasting, spring is full of meaning." The father-in-law especially liked this painting and hung it at home. More than ten years ago, my father died suddenly due to a heart attack, and my father-in-law often looked at the painting and sighed. Soon after, the father-in-law also grew older, his eyesight and hand accuracy were poor, and he rarely carved daffodils again.
Two
I recently followed Philology and read some interesting research articles. Most of the classical linguistic studies are based on multilingual ability, using the extensive skills of the same linguistics as the examination of phonetic surveys, to historically judge various types of literature, and then to conduct factual and rational academic analysis. Accidentally found in the study of Tang Dynasty foreign objects "The Golden Peach of Samarkand", the American sinologist Xue Aihua said: "Narcissus is a Roman plant introduced to medieval China. But its Chinese name is 'nai-gi', which is very similar to the Greek name 'narkissos', probably translated from the Persian name 'nargis'. He also quoted the record of the "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks": "Only the tree, out of the forest country." The seedlings are three or four feet long and the roots are as large as duck eggs. The leaves resemble garlic leaves, and the center strip is very long. There are six flowers at the end of the stem..." According to this description, this is almost certainly a daffodil. The Greek Narkissos is the famous "waterside narcissist" Narcissus in Greek mythology. It was only Xue Aihua's description of Narcissus "red and white, yellow and red with a heart" because of duan chengshi, the author of "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", and said that it could squeeze oil, which was far from today, so he cited the record in Pliny's "Naturalist", suspecting that Duan Chengshi was hearsay and may not have seen this flower.
Is Narcissus red? It's possible! Rare today, perhaps because of the Roman narcissus variant, an unnatural screening result in the Chinese literati's admiration for single-petal, white-flowered yellow-leaved daffodils. Because there is also a circumstantial evidence of red daffodils in ancient documents, the Ming Dynasty's "History of Flowers" said that Tang Xuanzong gave The twelve pots of red daffodils to lady Yu Guo, the provenance of which is not examined, and the use of Ming Dynasty materials to prove that the flowers of the Tang Dynasty can only be referenced, but it also shows that the existence of red daffodils is not an isolated evidence. However, Xue Aihua gave evidence of pliny's daffodil oil, which I think is not appropriate. I didn't go to Chapliny's writings, and I know that there is "daffodil oil" in the West, but not our "Limbo fairy". In the novel Harry Potter, Reesnep teaches Harry and asks him about the composition of various potions, including a "daffodil", but it is actually asphodel (Chinese more translated as "sun orchid", and some transliterated as "Afu flower"), which can be squeezed for oil. The ancient Greek poet Homer said that the land where the dead were buried was full of this flower, because in Western mythology it was always associated with the underworld or the post-Hellenistic Persephone in ancient Greek mythology.
Michelangelo Melriszi da Caravaggio's painting "Narcissos" (web image)
And how do you know that the "forest" in "The Miscellaneous Tricks of the Unitary Sun" is Rome? The Tang Dynasty people should have been influenced by the false name "Hrom" (possibly Rūm) in some eastern language, and the Tang pronunciation "Fulin" at that time was the transliteration of this "Hrom", and it should be known that the pronunciation of Fu-Lin in today's people has been very different from the Tang Dynasty. From this point of view, Narcissus came from the Roman Empire at least since the Tang Dynasty. By the Song Dynasty, Huang Tingjian received fifty daffodils from his good friend Wang Chongdao, and he "gladly sang for them", which showed that daffodils had become literati in China.
In the days of epidemic prevention and control, family members rarely go out, and getting along day and night is bound to be "trouble". I spent all day flipping through books, thinking I was knowledgeable, and conspicuously presented my son with many pieces of evidence to illustrate the arrival of Narcissus. Unexpectedly, he asked me: "Isn't this all cultural and historical materials, and isn't it fragrant that plant problems are solved by science?" "Makes sense! When I checked, I found that Japanese scholars and Chinese scholars proved a problem almost unanimously through chromosome research - Chinese daffodils are a long-cultivated plant, not native, as if molecular biology can prove this.
In fact, it is not so "high-tech", there are daffodils in foreign countries, I know from the poem of the English poet Wordsworth: "I wander alone, like a drifting cloud..." Many years ago I was alone in Leeds, England, wandering to the lake area in April, and saw the daffodil (yellow daffodil) in the poem for the first time, only to understand that in the experience of Chinese daffodils, I could not understand that a cluster of flowers was really golden. It is a bulb plant of the same family liliaceae as the Daffodils in Harry Potter, not the same thing as the Chinese Daffodils. Chinese daffodils are of the genus Narcissus in the family Phylloscopidae, and some people think that it is chinese according to its botanical classification that there is a "chinensis" in the Latin name, which is not necessarily true. For example, peaches are a genus of peaches in the rosaceae family, and the suffix of the Latin name means "Persia", but the origin is recognized as China.
I was forced by a teenager who advocated scientific thinking to bluff science popularization, but in fact, strict scientific plant taxonomy is not my strength. Sometimes I think this idea is very disappointing!
Daffodils photographed in the UK (Xinhua photo)
Three
Flowers are originally created things, and calling them "Lingbo Fairy", "Marigold Silver Terrace", and "Narcissus by the Water" are nothing more than stories and moralizations given to nature by man, which is "the culture of man". The people who write it and the people who read it do not necessarily believe in the authenticity of those narratives, but more often after generations have read and continued to write a certain story tradition, they have condensed some conventional and tacit allusions, thus constituting a cultural consensus. Therefore, daffodils can be narrated in the sense of naturalism and plant classification, but it does not prevent Chinese and foreign literati from pinning different emotions in it, let alone our personalized interpretation as readers.
For example, as a woman, when I read Narcissus's poems, I pay special attention to the gendered narrative of Narcissus: the Taoist Chen Zhuo wrote that "Xiangjun hates Fu Yunlai, although the dust is not stained." It is suspected that it is the Han Family Han De Hall, and the JinZhi is accompanied by Yuzhi Kai", the title is "Yong Shui Daffodil". Since the Golden Lingzhi grew in the copper pond of the Han Dynasty Hande Hall, the verse uses this allusion to compare the yellow flower buds of the daffodils to the golden Ganoderma lucidum, and the white petals are "Jade Zhi". It seems that there are not only Xiangfei bamboos and daffodils associated with Emperor E and Nüying. The Literati of the Ming Dynasty knew how to taste flowers, but some of their views also annoyed me. Yuan Zhonglang's study of the "History of Bottles" of flower arrangement has a special chapter" "Ling Ling", "Ling" Tong "Ling", that is, "the maid foil". He said that just as the palace needs a palace maid, the couple needs a concubine, and they all need to be foiled. The collocation law of flower arrangement is that plum blossoms take spring and camellia as concubines, peonies take roses, roses, and wood fragrances as concubines, and wax plums can be daffodils as concubines... Why? I secretly disagreed for Narcissus!
My son is in the third year of junior high school this year, although his studies are intense, I still let him and my grandfather learn to beat leaves for daffodils. Grandpa wore reading glasses, and while looking for a pulse and walking the knife, he said slowly: "Daffodils have to be trimmed, and the leaves are flowerless, just like people." The son was a little nervous, thinking that he was going to take a moral cultivation class again, and Grandpa continued: "Narcissus is the national flower, and it is our excellent traditional culture in China, which has been around for thousands of years." Pay attention to more, what our ancestors left behind, you have to study hard! The son looked at me and gave nunu a look, meaning that he wanted me to drop the bag of books from the set of "Narcissus West Talk". I secretly waved my hand and asked him to concentrate on seeing how Grandpa beat the leaves.
Sometimes, erudition is not the most important thing, love is.
Painter Han Min's Narcissus