Juniper VS Chinese Elm Tree: I recognize them as human names, but I read them wrong as plant names?

The Chinese names of plants are like refined codes, containing rich information such as their origin and morphological characteristics, without lengthy descriptions in biological terms. However, given the profound heritage and long history of Chinese characters, plant names have undergone many changes over the long years.

To this end, Tadpole Music specially invited Mr. Wei Deyong from the Shenzhen Writers Association to conduct an in-depth analysis of those common but easily mispronounced or misread plant names from multiple dimensions such as their naming origins, biological characteristics, and historical evolution.

Although the characters that make up the names of some plants are common and easy to recognize in daily life, their pronunciations are often unexpected when used to name plants. The reason is that these characters are polyphonic, and they are pronounced in a more uncommon way in plant names, which may not even be taught in school.

Juniper and Pu Shu are typical examples of this. Upon closer inspection, the pronunciations of "衧" and "朴" are very different when used as names of people and plants, which is why people are confused when reading them, and it is not surprising that they are mispronounced!

01

Juniper: A sharp contrast to Qin cypress

Qin Hui was a notorious traitor in Chinese history. He was widely despised for framing Yue Fei, a hero who fought against the Jin Dynasty in the Southern Song Dynasty. Originally, the character "Hui" was an elegant choice for naming, with a beautiful meaning, but since Qin Hui, people were ashamed to have the same name as him.

After the Song Dynasty, almost no one named their children "Hui" anymore. "Hui" almost became an exclusive label for Qin Hui. This is the origin of the saying "People have been ashamed to be named Hui since the Song Dynasty."

Portrait of Qin Hui

It is said that before the Southern Song Dynasty, the Chinese character "衧" was pronounced as "guì". In order to remember Qin Hui's evil deeds, later generations deliberately pronounced it as "huì", making "huì" (衧) an exclusive label for Qin Hui.

In modern Chinese dictionaries, "衧" has also become a polyphonic character: when it is pronounced as "guì", it refers to cypress; when it is pronounced as "huì", it specifically refers to the name Qin Hui. This change is not only a satire on Qin Hui's personal character, but also reflects the charm of language evolving with historical changes.

The character "桧" has a long history of more than 2,000 years . This character was first seen in the Chu-style bamboo slips during the Warring States Period. The original text was "檜", and the seal script is a left-right structure: the "木" on the left looks like a tree; the "会" on the right is a compound character of the right halves of the two characters "柏" and "松".

It turns out that the ancients found that the leaves of cypress resembled the trunk of cypress and pine, so they combined the two into one, and the word "檜" was created. Later, "Shuowen Jiezi" verified that: "(衧) cypress leaves and pine body."

Juniper spiny leaves

The scientific name of juniper is Juniperus chinensis. It is an evergreen tree of the genus Juniperus in the family Pinaceae, Pinaceae, and a model of precious tree species. The ancients used to abbreviate juniper as "juniper" and put it on a par with pine trees, considering it a symbol of longevity. The "Qi River is gurgling, and cypress oars and pine boats" in the Book of Songs is a clear proof of this.

Juniper

The wood of juniper was first widely used in furniture making due to its excellent corrosion resistance. As time went by, people gradually discovered its other function, that is, its branches and trunks would gradually twist into various shapes of spinning tops after years of baptism, showing a unique artistic beauty. Therefore, juniper began to be cleverly used in bonsai and garden art, becoming a material sought after by gardeners.

It is worth mentioning that the Latin name of juniper, Juniperus chinensis L., contains the "national standard" level certification. The specific epithet chinensis is composed of "chin" and "ensis", the former representing China and the latter indicating that this is a plant originating from a specific region.

Therefore, the entire Latin scientific name is literally translated as "Juniper is a Chinese plant" , which strongly highlights the local characteristics of juniper.

02

Pu Shu: This Pu Shu is not that Pu Shu

As we all know, Pu Shu is a male singer from mainland my country. His representative works, such as "Those Flowers" and "Ordinary Road", are popular all over the country with their sad but warm melodies. His real name is Pu Shu. Since the character "Pu" is cumbersome and difficult to recognize, he used the homophone "Pu" as his stage name, which is the Pu Shu we know now.

It is worth noting that "朴" is a polyphonetic character with four pronunciations.

Among them, "pǔ" is the most common, such as the word "plain" and "Pu Shu" as a person's name; secondly, the pronunciation "piáo" is mostly used in surnames, and it is a big surname among the Korean ethnic group in Northeast my country and South Korea; the third pronunciation is "pō", which mainly appears in the word "Pukao", which is a weapon commonly used by the heroes of Liangshan in "Water Margin" and a standard for traveling around the world.

Compared with the first three pronunciations, the fourth pronunciation "pò" is relatively rare and is used exclusively in plant names . Pu (pò) tree is an evergreen tree, and although it has the same name as the singer Pu Shu, it has a different pronunciation.

Hackberry belongs to the genus Hackberry of the family Ulmaceae, Urticales. There are more than 60 species worldwide, and more than 10 species in my country. Its leaves are oval and its ripe fruits are orange-red.

The tree crown of the Chinese hackberry is round and wide, and the shade is dense, so it is often used as a landscape tree. It is mainly distributed in the Huaihe River Basin and the area south of the Qinling Mountains in China. It is a common street tree in Zhejiang and Hangzhou . In addition, it is also cultivated in foreign countries such as Vietnam and Laos.

The orange-red fruits of the hackberry tree in autumn

The Chinese hackberry, also known as the acacia, is a charming plant . Its boulder bonsai shape perfectly combines mountains, rocks, flowers and trees to form a moving natural picture.

It is recorded that Chinese working people had discovered and planted hackberry trees more than 2,000 years ago. Its traditional Chinese character is “樸”, which originally meant unprocessed wood, and later extended to mean honest. There is a line in the Book of Songs, Da Ya, “棫朴”: “芃芃棫樸，薪之槱之”, and the “棫樸” here refers to hackberry trees, which is also the earliest source of the name hackberry trees.

In addition, the Chinese hackberry is also a recognized longevity tree species. Among them, the hackberry tree growing in Longchuan County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province is 15 meters tall and over 500 years old, which is a powerful witness to the vicissitudes of time.

Hackberry

References

1. Flora of China, Editorial Committee of Flora of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Science Press (2013 edition)

2. "On the Application of Chinese Elm Tree in Ecological Garden Construction", by Sun Zheshao and Lin Chun'e, "Landscape and Greening" No. 4, 2015

3. "Qin Hui is not a good man, but cypress is a good tree", author Qin Yalong, researcher at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiangsu Province, first published by "Science Academy"