The festive flower beds in our memories must have its presence

As National Day approaches, I would like to introduce to you a bright red plant to add some joy to the 75th anniversary of the founding of New China.

This plant is no stranger to everyone: you can see it blooming in the flower beds of parks, in the green belts of communities, and in the greenery of various festivals. Thousands of them gather together, like blazing fireworks in the green. It can be said that wherever there is a happy event, there is it.

It is an ordinary and warm impatiens.

The festive flower beds in our memories are definitely not without its presence丨Hanna Zelenko / wikimedia

The decathlon sage

Salvia splendens is a perennial herb or shrub of the genus Salvia in the family Lamiaceae. Salvia is derived from the Latin word salvare, which means healing, because plants of the genus Salvia were used to make herbs and essential oils in the ancient Mediterranean area, rather than as ornamental plants.

Among them, Salvia miltiorrhiza of the genus Salvia is a traditional herbal medicine that we Chinese are more familiar with. Its main medicinal part is its red, ginseng-like underground roots.

Flowers of Salvia miltiorrhiza丨First Light / wikimedia

Salvia miltiorrhiza as a medicinal herb丨Nianahsiwgoa / wikimedia

Salvia is one of the largest genera in the Lamiaceae family, with more than 1,000 members, distributed in temperate or tropical regions around the world. Salvia splendens comes from faraway Brazil, and the original species grows very tall, reaching more than one meter. Later, horticulturists discovered its value and cultivated many excellent dwarf varieties , which were introduced to all parts of the world.

Although it is called a bunch of red, there is more than one color of red丨Forest & Kim Starr / wikimedia

Because of its strong tolerance and resistance, high survival rate of cuttings and high seed germination rate, salvia splendens is very suitable for large-scale commercial cultivation and production . Salvia splendens is cheap, has a low maintenance threshold, and a long flowering period. In addition to being in the flowerbed, it is also suitable to be brought into your home balcony or indoors to embellish your home life.

Some other members of the genus Salvia are also common ornamental flowers, such as the blue sage S. farinacea, which is often mistaken for lavender . Their inflorescence is a beautiful sky blue, so it is also called a string of blue.

Blue sage that looks like lavender丨KENPEI / wikimedia

Some sage can be used for cooking or extracting essential oils, such as the medicinal sage S. officinalis , which is native to the Mediterranean coast. They exude a peppery flavor and can be chopped and used in cooking red meat, seafood, etc. to remove the fishy smell; they can also be used to extract essential oils as a raw material for fragrance.

Medicinal sage can be used for cooking and aromatherapy丨Javier Martin / wikimedia

In addition, if you are a fan of fantasy novels, you will know that sage can be used to ward off evil spirits and protect the body. The Indians in North America would collect a kind of sage with white flowers, dry it and tie it into a torch shape, which would emit thick white smoke after being lit. The Indians firmly believed that this smoke could drive away evil spirits and purify the space.

In addition, Hermès has a sage green Birkin bag, which is light and soft in color, quiet and soothing. The inspiration for its color comes from the gray-green leaves of medicinal sage.

The leaves of medicinal sage, the low-saturation gray-green color is also a very popular color recently. The "Internet celebrity" plants eucalyptus (eucalyptus) and blue star polypodium have leaves of similar colors丨David Monniaux / wikimedia

Some people confuse sage with Gnaphalium affine, but the two plants are actually very different. Gnaphalium affine is a herbaceous plant of the genus Gnaphalium in the Asteraceae family and is quite common in southern China.

The wormwood is densely covered with white hairs, with oblanceolate leaves and cute little yellow flowers. Its characteristics are still very distinct and it is not likely to be stepped on to death. In addition, the wormwood is also called Qingming grass in the south. One of the schools of Qingtuan, which we often eat during the Qingming Festival, uses wormwood as the raw material.

Don't step on it! 丨KENPEI / wikimedia

Learn physics well and you will have many children and grandchildren.

Green leaves and red flowers are the most intuitive impression of Salvia splendens. The stem of Salvia splendens is blunt and quadrangular, and the leaves are oval, which are almost not very ornamental. However, it is these inconspicuous green leaves that can set off the beauty of the Salvia splendens racemes.

Sucking the honey of a bunch of red flowers is also a childhood memory for many people丨Pixabay

The inflorescence of impatiens can be more than 20 cm high . The flowers are bell-shaped or firecracker-shaped, and are arranged in a whorl on the inflorescence, so impatiens has another cute nickname, firecracker flower .

The flowers of the saffron are lip -shaped corollas unique to the Lamiaceae family. They are mainly composed of two parts: one is the bell-shaped calyx , which is short and generally red; the other is the lip-shaped corolla , which extends from the opening of the calyx. It is two-lipped, with the upper lip erect and the tip slightly hooked down. The lower lip is shorter than the upper lip and split into three petals, just like Pinocchio's red nose. When I was a naughty child, I often plucked the corolla of the saffron and sucked the nectar inside. It tasted sweet, so I have a deep impression of their flowers.

The lip-shaped corolla extends from the bell-shaped calyx. Andrew Butko / wikimedia

The flowering period of impatiens is very long. Even if the corolla withers and dies, the remaining red calyx can hold on for a long time, so people often mistakenly believe that it blooms all year round.

In addition to the impressive inflorescence, the species of the genus Salvia, to which Salvia belongs, have also co-evolved with pollinators to develop a unique flower structure - a double stamen lever structure , and formed a unique mechanism of dorsal pollination . The lever-shaped stamens are specialized from the didynamous stamens, and the anther connectives are elongated to form upper and lower arms distributed on the lip-shaped flowers, with the upper arm being longer and the lower arm being shorter, forming a lever structure.

Two of the four stamens are long and two are short. This structure is called didynamous stamens and is commonly found in plants of the Lamiaceae and Scrophulariaceae families.

Because the opening of the salvia flower is so small, pollinators such as bees have to squeeze in. When squeezing in, they first push the horn-like protrusions on the lower arms of the sterile anthers, so that the torque of the joint pushes the upper arms of the fertile anthers downward, and the pollen touches the pollinator's back.

When the bee finishes its work and leaves, the oppressed lower arm will return to its original position, and the upper arm will naturally return to its original position.

Schematic diagram of the working principle of lever-shaped stamens | Regine Claßen-Bockhoff et al. / Organisms Diversity & Evolution (2004)

When the bee goes to another flower, the pollen on the back can touch the stigma of the pistil on the upper lip, and the back pollination is completed.

A bunch of red, more than just red

The bright red Salvia splendens commonly seen in flower beds today are basically the variety Salvia splendens 'Van-Houttei'. In addition, Chinese horticulturalists have also cultivated varieties of Salvia splendens with different colors and shapes, such as the purple S. splendens 'Violacea', the pure white S. splendens 'Alba', the pink "Pretty in Pink" that exudes girlishness, and the fiery orange "Princess of Orange Fragrance".

In addition, there are many varieties whose corollas and calyxes are different colors, such as the Purple Elf whose calyx is beige but the corolla is dark purple.

Red Hot Sally丨daryl_mitchell / flickr

Another purple variety of salvia, Vista Purple丨David J. Stang / wikimedia

The plasticity of the salvia is so high that if you could see it with your own eyes, it would definitely subvert your traditional perception of it.

Author: Attack of the flesh

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)