Chapter 9 Chapter 8 Apple belongs to Begonia, scarlet parrot, green and exquisite, with overlapping calyx and heavy tarsus, dazzling the sun.

Let me talk about the technical terms of botany first, and I don’t want to copy the definitions in botany books, so let’s use my understanding.Fortunately, I can forgive myself in advance if I say something inappropriate, and say that I am not a botanist.I also blame the botanists in our country, why don't they say more common words to the public. As far as I understand, these special terms are a convenient naming for classifying all plants.Plants are life.Therefore, first of all, it must be separated from all life forms on the earth.This big difference is called "boundary".The flowering plants and plants that I have written and will write about belong to the Kingdom Vegetables.

Under the world, there are "doors": gymnosperms and angiosperms.In layman's terms, angiosperms are conspicuously flowering plants, the largest group in the plant kingdom.The fruit of this kind of plant after flowering has a peel and pulp wrapped in seeds, so it is called angiosperm.In this way, it is also clear what gymnosperms are, that is, the seeds they bear are not wrapped by skin and flesh.On today's earth, there are not many gymnosperms, and there are only three types of cycads, ginkgoes, and pines. There are also "outlines" under the door.What does that mean?In the wild, plants reproduce by seeds, and when their buds shoot out of the ground, they germinate into first leaves called cotyledons.Strange to say, there are a large number of angiosperms, and their growth is very different from each other, but no matter whether they are plants or woody plants, whether they are trees or shrubs, there are two types of cotyledons: one or two.One piece belongs to the class "Monocotyledonae".Naturally, two pieces should be "Dicotyledons".

Under the outline is the "item".This concept is a bit difficult, and there is no obvious mark. Theoretically, the level of "order" is higher than that of "family", but according to my feeling of reading plant books and searching online, people are often used to skip "order" , and directly say "Ke".The sticking crabapple mentioned before, and the two kinds of crabapple that I will talk about today belong to the order of Rosa.There are many families under this order, and the common feature is that all flowers have five petals (the ones with complicated petals after artificial cultivation are not counted), among which the most well-known plants are "Rosaceae".Therefore, people often skip the head and talk about Rosaceae.This department is a big family.There are more than 3,000 species in the world.There are more than 1,000 species in China.These more than 1,000 species are divided into 53 genera.

Of course, this classification method was introduced from abroad as modern science. In ancient China, there was no such meticulous and meticulous science.Therefore, looking at the crabapple in classical poems, they are all generalized, and I will not say which kind of crabapple is written specifically.Li Shangyin never said it, and neither did Su Dongpo.Today, it is always difficult for us to distinguish what kind of crabapple they are singing. It takes some guesswork and thinking.It is said that there is a botanical book in ancient China called "Quanfangpu", which divides crabapple into four "products"-that is, the meaning of four kinds.The four "products" are sticky crabapple, papaya crabapple, Xifu crabapple and hanging silk crabapple.These four products all belong to the "Rosaceae".

There is also a "genus" under the family, and these four types of crabapple are divided into two genera in botany: Papaya (Stalked Begonia and Papaya Begonia) and Apple (Xifu Begonia and Suisi Begonia).That is to say, the characteristics of two kinds of crabapple under Rosaceae are similar to papaya, while the other two are more similar to apple.They are all woody crabapples, and the similarity between them is lower than that of papaya and apple. Not to mention, there are several herbaceous plants also called crabapple in Chinese, which have no such relationship with these woody crabapples. up.If you insist on saying yes, it is too far away, roughly even more distant than the kinship between humans and apes.

These days, the begonias that once bloomed all over the city have withered away, and the hard branches have long been covered with new green leaves. I have never seen papaya begonias, or I have seen them but I don’t know them.On the contrary, two weeks after leaving, when I came back from Beijing where it was snowing, I saw that Xifu Begonia and Cuisi Begonia were already in full bloom.Driving through the city, white and pink and pink and white flowers are blooming on the isolation belt of the street, and a tree flashes past the car window.The carefully planned and calculated space needs to be decorated with trees, but the trees are not allowed to stretch as much as possible.

Like everyone else, I like the fact that there are plants everywhere in the city, and there are flowering plants, but I would like the plants to appear in a natural way even more.And there is a crabapple tree downstairs in my house.As soon as the sun came out in the morning, I went downstairs with my camera. Beside the No. 2 gate of the yard, the two cypresses by the pool were already red, but one side was against the wall and the other side was facing the water, making it impossible to get a closer look, let alone through the camera. The camera goes to stare, to observe.Then I went to the community park to inquire again, and the few crabapple trees beside the viewing bridge almost bloomed into a pink flower wall!In the depths of the park where the plum blossoms were photographed, I saw another Xifu Begonia with all its flower buds in full bloom, like a cloud floating under the light blue sky.

Hold your breath through the viewfinder and see those flowers.The surrounding world then disappears outside that box.Only the flowers, the flowers that are about to open, the flowers that are in full bloom, change their brilliance under the shining of the rising sun.It wasn't until it was time to go to work that I collected my mood, stuffed myself into the car, and merged into the middle of the rolling traffic. In the afternoon, I received an invitation to go to Korea for a literary exchange, and found that my passport had expired, so I went to the Public Security Bureau to apply for it.Things must come out. When walking on Qingjiang Road, I saw a round of warm and golden sunset in the sky behind the scattered buildings at the end of the traffic flow, and I thought it was really spring.The spring in Chengdu is beautiful. The most important thing is not the blooming of flowers, but the bright sun and blue sky when the haze of winter dissipates.Thinking of this, he subconsciously drove the car into the Provincial Museum, took the camera and went into the nearby park to see Haitang.I saw along the way that the magnolia came to an end, the weeping willows and green ribbons swayed softly by the water, and the yellow winter jasmine hangs down the bank, reflecting the green water brightly.Accompanied by the same bright yellow Ditang.The peach blossoms are blooming, the plum blossoms are blooming, and the plum blossoms are blooming.But I went straight to the place where there were groups of begonias beside the winding path in my memory.

Yes, they are all in full bloom, and they are both crabapples of the genus Malus: Xifu crabapple and Chueisi crabapple. Seeing women taking pictures of each other under the flower tree, they would always pull down a branch and lay it across their chests, and always stick out their noses to smell it, because they didn't smell the strong fragrance as imagined, and there was an expression of disbelief on their faces.In fact, flowers have fragrance, or color, or honey, which is to attract insects or birds to help spread pollen.The lack of fragrance just means that some foreign media are not needed to pollinate.That said, not every flower needs to be scented.Flowers attract birds, bees, butterflies, and other insects to pollinate them, and in addition to their aroma, they have color, nectar, and shape.Both birds and insects are matchmakers who need to be paid.But there is also a matchmaker in nature who does not care about remuneration and does not know that she has done good deeds, and that is Feng.The wind shakes the pollen, the wind lifts the pollen, the wind blows the pollen, turning the pollen into a puff of even choking smoke.American Rosey wrote about pollen in "The Secret Life of Flowers": "We all breathe the fine smoke of this male".In this way, the wind sprinkles the pollen (sperm) from the stamen of one flower onto the stigma of another flower, impregnating it and helping the plant eliminate the risk of inbreeding.

Now, the color and shape of the flowers of the Xifu Begonias and Chuisi Begonias, which do not have much fragrance in front of me, are truly indescribable.Moreover, bees kept flying from one flower to another, and butterflies came too, and the pollen on their hairy feet became little pink balls.The American writer Rose also said: If we only observe plants in a biological sense, then we should all feel blush when we pass by those flowers whose sepals and petals are fully unfolded, and the stamens and pistils are boldly exposed.Although it is said that flowers are not for people to watch, because flowers have appeared on the earth for more than 200 million years, but how long has it been for people to appear?But people do appreciate flowers, and a lot of work has been done to make many flowers more suitable for people to appreciate.

So forget about botany now, that’s how flower viewing is, you need to understand a little bit of botany, but when flowers become an aesthetic object, such as now, when a begonia full of red buds and a blooming When crabapples with white flowers stand side by side and reflect each other, you should forget about botany. Begonias of Xifu either open earlier or have a faster opening speed. All the flowers have been unfolded, and clusters of three or five flowers form cymes, which are densely covered with branches.Looking closely, there are bursts of blush on the jade-like and satin-like petals, like the evenly spread rouge on the cheeks of a beauty.Can not help but think of a word: Begonia red. The petals of the hanging silk crabapple are as soft as silk, the buds are a little deeper red than the newly bloomed flowers, and the full-bloomed ones are a little lighter red, hanging on the long green and reddish flower stalks and shaking gently.Those flowers, all the pink and white are lightly radiated from a school of pink, not just every branch, but every flower, the illusion of pink and white and light red is unpredictable and rich, it is the same flower, every petal , the interpenetration and smudging of the pink and white are enough to attract people to stop for a long time and immerse themselves in it.Nature's God is such a master of freewheeling color palette.From these exquisitely changing flowers, one can imagine that the god of nature may have more detailed, richer and more comfortable emotions than ours.Words can't do anything to express these colors, maybe good music is closer to that kind of freedom and richness.In fact, the most powerful expression is that these colors themselves, these flowers themselves, are noisy and quiet, under the increasingly bright blue sky of Chengdu in spring. 2010.3.18