I'm going to eat two big grapefruits again!
Winter is the season to eat grapefruit. Most people have eaten grapefruit, and there should be only a few who have seen grapefruit flowers.
Yuzu, along with oranges, lemons, oranges, etc., is a relative of the same fruit tree belonging to the genus Citrus of the family Rubiaceae. The history of cultivating grapefruit in China is nearly 3,000 years, and it has been artificially cultivated since the Zhou And Qin era. Because grapefruit likes to grow in warm and humid places, it is mostly cultivated in tropical and subtropical areas such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi in southern Taiwan and the coastal areas of the mainland. Every year in February and March, the grapefruit tree is covered with clusters of flower buds. The buds are very rounded, white as jade, and the strings are hidden in the transparent green leaves, which is very low-key. When not blooming, the flower bones are like lotus seeds, and like a small cannonball that is strong, people can't help but want to pinch and try the feel.
Fruitful grapefruit tree
By mid-to-late March, the buds will burst suddenly. Usually the top one opens first, and once it blooms, the snow-white petals try to stretch out, and some even gradually roll back, like the lotus throne where Guanyin Niangniang sits in "Journey to the West". Grapefruit flowers are usually four or five petals, but sometimes there are 3 or 6-petal grapefruit flowers, and the heart of the flower spits out golden stamens and green pistils, dotted in the green leaf bushes, which are very eye-catching and also emit an attacking floral fragrance.
Rounded grapefruit buds
The aroma of yuzu flowers comes from a special place, elegant, sweet, refreshing, rich and refreshing. According to modern analysis, yuzu flowers contain more than 30 kinds of chemicals, which are very complex, so they will give people a very peculiar feeling. Among them, the sweet fragrance of grapefruit flowers comes from nerolidol, fragrance from acacia alcohol, and refreshing fragrance from dibutyl phthalate and terpenes.
Grapefruit flowers
For a long time, grapefruit flowers have rarely been used, always allowing them to wither into the mud. It is said that during the Qing Dynasty, it was only in the imperial palace that special people would collect grapefruit flowers to make cosmetics for the concubines to beautify. Yuzu flowers are also occasionally used to make yuzu flower tea, which is made from the flowers of yuzu and green tea. However, the production and processing of grapefruit tea is very difficult, and in history, most of them are only used as a "base" before the jasmine tea to make up for the lack of jasmine fragrance in spring, so it is rare to sell yuzu flower tea separately. To make pomelo tea, fresh pomelo flowers are required to be picked in the morning, the flowers are large and full, the color is white, and they want to be put or slightly opened.
However, the flowering period of the grapefruit flower is only a short period of 20 days, so the elegant and beautiful flowers, we still use our eyes to appreciate it, rather than "the blossom can be folded straight and folded"!
Author: Tadpole Jun