Editor's note: From the deep sea to the mountains, from deserts to rainforests, plant imprints are found everywhere on earth. A world of changing years, climate change, geological movement, habitat change, plants that have endured and remain diverse in evolution. Voice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly opened "Flowers and Flowers of All Things", where we pay attention to the survival, competition, reproduction and death of plants, display the strange and colorful nature of the natural world, interpret the thousands of meteorological phenomena of life, explore the magical secret of life, and pay tribute to this silent and vigorous world.
The Jingchu Chronicle records that "the fifth day of May is called the Bathing Orchid Festival." Four people and a hundred grasses. Nowadays, there is a play of fighting hundreds of grasses. Cai Ai thought of man, hanging on the door, to poison gas. Take calamus or wisps or crumbs, to pan wine. It is a daily race to cross, collect miscellaneous medicines. Tie the arms with multicolored silk, known as "breaking the army", which makes people not plague. There are also strips and other weaving groups of miscellaneous items, in order to give each other a legacy. Take enough of the words of the Pelicans. ”
The traditional activities of the Dragon Boat Festival in the Jingchu area have been rich and colorful since ancient times, and the festival atmosphere is strong. At the beginning of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the Jiangnan area began to enter the continuous plum rainy season, the air was hot and humid, various diseases and poisonous insects were breeding in large quantities, and the Dragon Boat Festival was also given the connotation of epidemic prevention and disease removal. Hanging mugwort leaves and calamus is the most widely popular folk activity during the Chudi Dragon Boat Festival, people hang mugwort leaves in the hall, and use calamus as a sword to insert them outside the door, hoping to play a role in warding off evil spirits and exorcising demons.
Qing, Xu Yang painted the "Duanyang Story Map" volume
The fifth title is "Hanging AiRen", titled: "Jingchu custom is to hang Ai as a person on the door, to you poison gas." ”
mugwort
Artemisia argyi, also known as white wormwood, house wormwood, mugwort, and May wormwood, is a plant of the genus Artemisia in the family Asteraceae, and the whole plant has a strong aroma.
The main root of Mugwort is significantly more than the lateral root, and there are often rhizomes and vegetative branches lying horizontally and underground. Its stems, branches, and leaves are covered with a layer of fine white fluff, and the breeze blows over the reverse of its leaves to reveal a distinct silvery white, so it is called white wormwood. Its natural distribution is extremely extensive, commonly found on sunny barren slopes.
People hang in front of the door at the Dragon Boat Festival, hoping to use its volatile smell to drive away evil qi and eliminate viruses. Traditional Chinese medicine uses wormwood for acupuncture, and the most common practice is to use wormwood to soak in water for bathing and fumigation.
Qing, Dong Di painted "Taiping Joyful Map" book of "Cai Ai"
"The Chronicle of the Ages of the Case says: 'The Dragon Boat Festival is eaten with calamus or wisps or crumbs.'" The Jing Chu Ji says: 'On the fifth day of May, the ai was suspended on the house. ’”
In ancient times, when the plague was raging, many people in a village often died of the plague, and these people infected by the plague were considered by the villagers to be "evil", "hit the ghost" or "poisoned gas". The villagers who hung mugwort or smoked mugwort in their homes were not infected by the plague, so they firmly believed that mugwort had a role in warding off evil spirits. "Evil" actually refers to all the factors that can cause disease, and it is not a certain entity. And "warding off evil spirits" is actually to play a role in air disinfection to prevent plague infection. Ge Hong, a famous medical scientist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, introduced the method of using mugwort smoke disinfection to prevent plague infection in his "Elbow Reserve Emergency": during the plague epidemic, "the four corners of the bed of moxibustion patients are used, each one is strong, so that it is not infected", and it is believed that the use of this method to prevent epidemic infection has an "excellent" effect.
Modern research on muscular tobacco has found that the main chemical components of mugwort are naphthalene, ethanol, butyramide, acetic acid, cyclohexene, quaternary ketoacid, and the rest are lower alcohols, acids, alkenes, and amine compounds. Some of these chemicals do have a certain killing effect on a variety of pathogens, but the terpene compounds in mugwort leaves will produce a large number of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons when not completely burned, and some varieties of moxa are not completely burned to produce a certain tar and arsenic to the human body also has a certain harm, so it is not recommended to use smoked wormwood to drive away diseases in a closed home environment.
At present, the more widely used wormwood leaf essential oil (Wormwood Leaf oil), which is mainly a unilateral essential oil extracted from mugwort leaf by water vapor distillation method, is rich in α-pinene, pinene, α-terpinene, γ-terpineene, eucalyptin, artemisinone, artemisinol, 2-cyclohexene-1-alcohol, camphor, dragon brain, 4-terpineol, trans-caryophyllene, eugenol and other characteristic components.
calamus
Calamus with wide leaves is often found in the Dragon Boat Festival, or floats in wine glasses, or inserts in bottles, or is paired with durian flowers, wormwood, and rice dumplings. The leaves of calamus used in the Dragon Boat Festival are slender, with bulging edges in the middle, like a sword, which alchemists call "water swords", which can be used to drive away evil spirits and avoid disasters. Corresponding to the Dragon Boat Calamus is the botanical calamus (Acorus calamus L.), also known as the water calamus, which is a genus of calamus in the family Tiannanxing.
Yuan, the axis of "Heavenly Beauty"
The painting vase flowers are arranged with three kinds of flowers, hollyhocks, pomegranates and water candles, with Chinese knot sachets hanging between them, zongzi, lychees, pomegranates, etc. in the pots on the side, and seasonal flowers and fruits such as calamus, cherries and mulberries underneath, which are typical Dragon Boat Festival flower arrangement works.
The rhizome of the water calamus is transverse, slightly flattened, branched, and the outer skin is yellowish brown with an aromatic smell. Its bright leaves are basal, sword-like and linear, with a distinct bulge in the middle ribs on both sides. The inflorescence is a sword-like line of Buddha flame buds, 3 flowers are yellow-green, and the berries are red. Flowering period is from June to September. It is widely distributed in all provinces and cities in China, and often grows on watersides, swampy wetlands or floating islands in lakes below 2600 meters above sea level.
Calamus plant painting (image from the Internet)
Details of the flower part of the water calamus (image from the Internet)
Calamus seeds (image from the Internet)
Water calamus, known for its strong aroma. The Shennong Materia Medica, the earliest book of the Han Dynasty, contains, "Calamus, spicy, warm." The main wind is cold and wet, coughing up the upper air, happy hole, supplementing the five internal organs, passing through the nine tricks, clear ears and eyes, and sounding. Serve for a long time, light body, do not forget, do not confuse, prolong the year. A Changyang. ”
Micrograph of cross-sectional staining of tuber tubers of calamus aqua (image from the network)
Dried calamus (image from the Internet)
gardenia
Yang Xunzhai's "Cun Qi Hua" once said that "the name of the quinoa is from Baofang, and the lavender wind opens all over the frost." Idle sweeping the floor and sitting on the ground, receiving the endless fragrance of this flower. "The fragrant gardenias that are common in the streets and alleys of the Dragon Boat Festival are perhaps people's most profound feelings about the arrival of summer.
Gardenia jasminoides Ellis of the genus Gardenia jasminoides Ellis in the family Madderidae has a single-petal and heavy-petaled variant of the white toad (var.fortuniana (Lindl.) Hara, Enum. Sperm. Jap.), a common ornamental gardenia is a heavy petal called "large flower gardenia". The most ancient application is the single-petal gardenia, with six petals, called "mountain gardenia". It is characterized by a tall tubular flower center in the middle of the petals, with six flower buds spread deep next to them, and the fruit is often used for dyeing.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, the court and folk all used gardenia flowers as the Dragon Boat Festival, and volume 3 of the "Past Events of Wulin" "Dragon Boat Festival": "Dozens of large golden vases were planted all over the place, and sunflowers, durians, and gardenias were planted around the palace pavilion"; "The Dragon Boat Festival" of the "West Lake Prosperity Record": "On the first day of the first month, families inside and outside the city made offerings, and all planted calamus, pomegranates, hollyhock flowers, gardenias and the like..."
Gardenia flowers and gardenia fruits
jasmine
When talking about the GrandEur of the Dragon Boat Festival, the "Records of the Prosperity of the Old Man of the West Lake" said: "Jasmine blooms inside and outside the city, and there are no less than hundreds of people wearing flowers. "Summer jasmine is in the same column as typical Dragon Boat Flowers such as hollyhocks, pomegranates, gardenias and so on. Jasminum sambac (L.) Aiton is a frangipani plant of the family Rhinoceros, which is also a famous raw material for flower tea and an important fragrance raw material.
Grass
Hemerocallis fulva (L.) L.) is a plant of the genus Hemerocallis (L.) in the family Lilyaceae, which also often appears in the traditional cultural imagery of the Dragon Boat Festival.
Jade hairpin
"Entering the light wind does not break the dust, the jade hairpin rhinoceros wall is drunk and good", Su Shi's "Huanxi Sha" has a scene depicting the dragon boat festival when the jade hairpin is in full bloom, and the aroma hits people. In the Seventy-Seven Times of Li Ruzhen's novel "Mirror Flower Edge" in the Qing Dynasty, it is mentioned that the jade hairpin is used as a fighting grass and the calendula chrysanthemum is used as the opposite, depicting the fierce fighting grass scene, which includes: "calendula grass" to "jade hairpin flower", "Cigu flower" to "jealous woman grass", "wind blowing no bell grass" to "rain hitting silent drum flower".
Hosta plantaginea is a plant of the genus Jade in the family Lilyaceae, which is cold, astringent and bitter. Modern pharmacological studies have shown that its flowers are rich in flavanols and have a variety of biological effects.
Qing Shi female painter Gai Qi's "Dou Sketch"
Source: Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences