■ Star Eye Reading / Wen Xing (Senior Cultural Journalist, Vice Chairman of Kunming Literary and Art Critics Association)
Author: [Jin] Ji Han / Picture: Yang Yingying
Publisher: China Pictorial Publishing House
Ji Kang (224-263 or 223-262), the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest", was born in the late Three Kingdoms period and enjoyed a well-known scholar and literary scholar. Less well known is that his family also produced a prominent botanist and naturalist, Ji Han (263-306), the nephew of Ji Kang.
There are historical records that Ji Han was also an excellent literary artist, although few of his works have survived, most of them have been lost. What made him enter the final annals of history was his botanical and naturalistic work "Southern Grass and Trees".
Ji Han is not only the first botanist in the history of our country to have clear records and works circulated, but even, according to scholars, he is also the first botanist in the world.
Its "Southern Grass and Wood Shape", in history, pioneered the division of the main plants in southern China into four categories: grass, wood, fruit and bamboo, which greatly advanced botany, more than 1400 years earlier than the classification system established by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus in 1732-1737. After that, Liang Tao Hongjing of the Southern Dynasty wrote "Catalogue of Famous Doctors", Northern Wei Jia Sihe wrote "Qi Min Zhi Shu", and Ming Li Shizhen wrote "Compendium of Materia Medica", all of which were influenced by the classification of "Southern Grass and Wood".
Ge Hong (284-364), a famous medical scientist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was 24 years younger than Ji Han, and the two felt sorry for each other. In the preface to his famous book "Baopuzi", Ge once talked about his life experience of meeting and knowing Ji Han, praising Ji Han as "a great instrument of a generation" and "engaging in a heroic view, it is difficult to drive together".
Today, the "Great Plants: Southern Grasses and Trees" that I recommend to my friends comes from the "great works" left for us by Ji Han more than 1700 years ago.
Compared with the original works of the ancients, this work has been the latest proofreading and compilation of the writing of various plants, and has been newly interpreted and presented in the form of fresh and vivid hand-drawn beautiful pictures. As soon as you open it, it is like a spring breeze, and the spring breeze is refreshing, and the body and mind are pleasant.
Over the past few months, we have repeatedly mentioned a phrase: there is no winter that is insurmountable, and there is no spring that does not come.
The spring of 2020, as usual, comes as promised in the cycle of season; the spring of 2020, unlike usual, is an epidemic that makes people cherish these vibrant colors.
To this day, we still can't completely safely go out of the room, go to the poetic distance, go to the green, go to the flowers, and enjoy the beauty of nature. We still cannot let our guard down.
But there's another easy and convenient way to open spring that I'm going to recommend to my friends today — read The Great Plant: The Southern Grass.
Herbs, fragrant flowers, fruits, ancient trees, medicine, folklore, tribute, strange talk! This is a great ancient botanical landscape atlas, taking you across time and space to appreciate the legends of flowers and trees in the Lingnan region.
Shi Jun: Reading the ancients' "Southern Grass and Trees" can help us understand today's flowers, and can also help us recall the feelings of the past, history and reality intersect between words and pictures. There are also plants that have just come from exotic places in the book at that time—sweet potatoes, jasmine, and henna—and the description of these plants can help us better understand the lives of the ancients and the stories they left us.
Knowing the name of the grass, wood, birds and beasts is an attitude to life, a taste for life, and a new social behavior - to become friends with another form of life. Life will change as a result.
Also known as frangipani flowers, they were transplanted by the Hu people from Western countries to Nanhai County (南海郡: established by the Qin Dynasty, including most of present-day Guangzhou). Southerners love the aroma of this flower and compete to grow it. Women in the south use colored silk threads through the hearts of flowers and use flower bunches as jewelry.
Cardamom flower, its seedlings are like reeds, the leaves are like ginger leaves, the flowers are spike-shaped, wrapped in curly young leaves. The flowers are reddish, the tips of the spikes are darker in color, the leaves are gradually stretched, and the flowers are protruding.
Ginger flowers, stems and leaves are indistinguishable from ginger. The roots are inedible, and the flowers are hidden between the leaves, in the shape of wheat grains, forming spikes, tender red.
Wisteria, with slender leaves and a stem like a bamboo root, is very solid. The bark has several layers, with white flowers and black seeds, which are used to make wine, and will not decay even after twenty or thirty years.
Nootropics, shaped like the tip of a brush, seven or eight minutes long, bloom in February, color like a lotus, flowers fall fruit, ripe in May and June, spicy taste, added to a variety of foods are very fragrant.
Hibiscus flowers, the flowers are dark red, five petals, as large as hollyhocks, and there is a flower bud that grows out of the flowers, which is a little golden on it, and when it shines in the sun, it seems to be ignited. Also known as Akatsuki, Nichiji, Fosang, Fuso and so on.
Hui grass, also called lavender, leaves like jute, two pairs of opposite, smell fragrant like mushrooms, lavender in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" has been recorded, is a kind of vanilla, most people think it refers to lingling incense, that is, primrose plant spirit vanilla.
Thorn trees, every year on the third of March, the branches and leaves are luxuriant, and small red flowers bloom between the leaves, reflecting the trees and mountains are red. If three or five flowers wither, three or five new flowers will bloom, and they will bloom alternately for a whole year.