Chapter 20 The nineteenth chapter of privet. The privet leaves are all gone, and it will be raining in autumn.

In June, the city is full of flowers. A week, another week, almost another week. The momentum of this flower has not weakened slightly. Flowering is the city's most evergreen street trees.These trees are so densely green from spring to winter.When the weather turns hot, the most numerous trees in the city lift up a panicle of finely divided, densely packed florets.The weather is getting hotter by the day.The traffic is rolling and the crowd is in a hurry.It also increased the heat of the city.Maybe it's because the flower blooms too easily, and it's too common.No one wants to look up at them.Until dusk, the city is tired and the hustle and bustle gradually subsides.

Put on loose clothes, walk under these tall trees with thick shade, and feel the fragrance of flowers that was overwhelmed by heat waves and noise during the day began to float in the air.The setting sun was red, falling slowly from behind the jagged buildings at the end of the street, falling, and then disappearing, leaving only the reddish sunset glow in the gray-blue sky.When the sunset glow turned gray-black due to its own burning, the street lamps lit up one by one.The shadows cast by the trees and the faint fragrance of flowers overwhelm people.At this time, the expressions and bodies of the people walking on the road relax, and they seem to be aware of the existence of other things besides people and the crowd.

I can't help but think of the verses in the ancient Indian Veda "Ode to Creation": The base of the sprout is the power of excitement, self-planting below, and exhaustion above. However, who can successfully poke out? Now I will give the answer easily: the head of "successfully poked out" is full of flowers.Stroll along the wide sidewalks of South Second Ring Road, passing tree after tree.The trees are full of flowers.Those dense clusters of flowers that are very similar to lilacs form inflorescences that stand upright on the top of the tree, while others, as the flat and slightly drooping branches gently brush over the shoulders, rustle. The light yellow flowers leave the branches and fall behind and in front of them.According to the thinking of the ancient Indians, the blooming of flowers is the concentrated blooming of the passion of the creator god. What about the fall of these flowers?I think it is the burst of life passion of the tree - the burst of passion overflowing with fragrance.

I also read a foreign poem "Invited to the Wild": Research cherry trees. White elderberry by the roadside: Five stems, five petals. Five stamens. So accurate, sister - I put my arms around you. See straight once a day. At a cursory glance, this should suffice. This poem illustrates another culture's attitude towards nature.The reason for such observation and in-depth study is because of the miraculous beauty and passion of life contained in the objects of observation.And now, the trees are growing in rows in the city.In front of the window, on the street corner, in the square, by the water.After walking back, lying on the bed reading a book, there seems to be a faint fragrance lingering in the nose.Those beautiful and profound words will have a longer aftertaste.Yes, I was reading those words about those flowering trees I just passed.

The name of those flower trees is privet. Before going to bed, I posted a photo of privet blossoms on Weibo.A friend immediately told me that in their place, this flowering tree is called Holly.Holly is another name for privet, because it is evergreen, and the green slightly waxy leaves always glow faintly in winter.Presumably that is why it got its name Holly.The privet leaves are so shiny because they contain more oil, which can be extracted by distillation.However, privet, the official name in Chinese, has moral appeals.It is said in an ancient book: "Negative frost is verdant and verdant, shaking Ke Lingfeng, and virgins admire their name, or tree them in cloud halls, or plant them in courts." Traditional patriarchal societies use this method of searching for symbolic meanings for A tree sums up a virtue and associates it with women's pursuit of chastity—not that women voluntarily pursue it, but men make them pursue it.

I have seen a historical material: In the Ming Dynasty, an official in Hangzhou City ordered people in the city to plant privet.But I thought, is this official a real moralist or a hypocritical moralist?The hypocritical moralists we see almost every day can be ignored.It would be interesting if the official was a real moralist.Based on the impressions of officials we get every day, it is common for people to seek morality from others, but it is rare for them to be self-disciplined.Of course, I still think about why, since the Song and Ming Dynasties, Chinese men suddenly regard women's chastity as the key to an ideal society?Just like today, there are always people who attach the construction of social conscience and morality to some ridiculous statements.This kind of ancient and modern consistency, did not establish a systematic botanical system, but came up with a set of tree sociology or tree morality.It makes people have to learn from pine trees for a while, and learn from lotus flowers for a while.One day, when I was walking in the shadow of the privet tree, I heard people singing red songs in the park singing "I want to learn from the green pine on the top of Mount Tai".But I knew that it was a joke of retired old people, so I returned to my relaxed state of mind.

Just like today, when more people see this tree, they don't immediately have the idea of ​​imprisoning women.When they approached these trees full of trees and flowers, what they saw was still poetic and picturesque. I went to a certain university to listen to a lecture, and when I was walking on the campus, I suddenly remembered that two years ago, some female students of this university made a high-profile announcement in the newspaper that they would keep their virginity until their wedding night.How this turned out is unknown.Today, the media that hype this kind of event also taught us the word "hype".Therefore, we do not question the authenticity of this matter, let alone ask the media to tell us the results of the implementation of these female students' declarations.This incident, I just thought of it by chance before the lecture started.Of course, I thought of the politics of fun tree naming.When I was thinking about this, there happened to be a female doctor of this university beside me, so I asked her if she knew the flowering tree above her head.say do not know.I told her the name of this tree, but she didn't think about the moral significance of the tree, and just said lightly, it seems that the name of the smelly Chinese medicine is also called this.Yes, privet fruit is the seed that the tree bears after flowering.Today is the age of science, so when our women see a plant, they think of the pharmacology of plants rather than the ethics of trees, which also shows how quickly the authority established by men over women is lost.

If Chinese women today have some flower knowledge in their minds, it also comes from the so-called "flower language" in the Western customary system. But when I started writing this group of phenology notes, I strictly guarded myself not to explore the pharmacological content of plants in Chinese medicine.One shortcoming of Chinese plant knowledge is that it is too moral; another shortcoming is that it is too practical, either because it can be eaten, or because it has some medicinal value, otherwise, these plants will be excluded from our field of vision.Moralism and pragmatism, the two ends of the mouse, are the crux of the culture in which we live.

Stop it, I want to remember that the only reason for writing these words is to "know more about the names of flowers, birds, plants and trees" and learn a little botany from the plants and trees around me.As Whitman said in his poem: "Learn to appreciate the beauty of things". Privet is indeed a beautiful plant.If the trees were not so beautiful, they would not stand in such a row, standing so widely on the street corners of this city, casting warm shade on the hard concrete buildings called "concrete" by Taiwanese.When the crowd is too crowded and must emit foul smell, use its fragrance to clear our minds and eyesight.Ligustrum is a plant of Oleaceae.Compared with cloves of the same family, privet has a less intense aroma.Compared with Osmanthus fragrans, which is also of the same family, it is not that "floating fragrance".Thanks to the plants of Oleaceae: clove, privet, and osmanthus, while digesting the exhaust gas we produce with green leaves, they also provide such shade; I also want to thank privet, cloves, and osmanthus for spreading such fragrance to us, because This kind of aroma at least gives us a pure emotional pursuit.

The summer solstice has arrived, and lilacs have already bloomed.Osmanthus has to wait until autumn.And Privet has also come to an end.At this time, when walking under the privet tree on the street, there will be a field of finely fallen flowers under your feet.The clusters of flowers we see on the tree are actually collections of these finely detailed flowers.Now, they spread out, falling to the ground one by one, the color gradually dimmed, and the fragrance gradually dissipated.