There are so many beautiful flowers, why did the ancients use peach blossoms to describe women?

Since ancient times, people have never been stingy in praising women's beauty, and one of the most commonly used phrases is "beautiful as a flower." Have you ever wondered what kind of flowers are used to describe women?

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Some say it must be roses; others say it must be peonies... In China, there are too many flowers that are endowed with the image of beauty. However, the earliest one to be used was peach blossoms.

The peach tree is young and thriving, and its flowers are bright and beautiful.

The daughter of Zhi is married, and she is suitable for his family.

The peach tree is young and lush, and its fruits are abundant.

The daughter of Zhi marries and is suitable for his family.

The peach tree is young and tender, and its leaves are dense.

When a son marries, he should be a good wife and family member.

——The Book of Songs: Zhou Nan: Taoyao

This is a poem that ancient people used to celebrate a wedding and praise the newlyweds. Although it only has a few dozen words, it uses the flowers, fruits and leaves of peach to repeatedly sing about the beautiful scene of a girl getting married and wearing beautiful clothes. In particular, the word "blazing" is used to describe the girl through peach blossoms, and the girl's bright and moving image is vividly portrayed on paper. Since then, peach blossoms have become the "ancestor of ancient poems and fu praising beauties."

So why did the ancients choose peach blossom to describe women ? Let's take a look~

There are peaches in the garden, and the fruits are delicious.

Peach is a small deciduous tree in the genus Prunus, Rosaceae. Its fruit is delicious and juicy, and is loved by people all over the world. The species name of peach, "persica", means "from Persia", because in ancient Rome, peach fruit was called "Persian apple". Later, this name was gradually inherited by various European languages, so there is peach in English, pêche in French, pfirsich in German, etc.

In fact, peaches are not native to Persia, but to China .

The opening line of The Book of Songs: Wei Feng: There are peaches in the garden, and the fruits are delicious. "Garden" refers to a place where fruit trees are planted. This shows that the Chinese had already planted delicious peaches more than 2,000 years ago. In addition, The Book of Songs: Wei Feng: Wood Guava wrote: "Throw me a wooden peach, and I will repay you with jade. It is not a reward, but a token of our everlasting friendship." This shows that in that era when agricultural technology was not yet developed and productivity was low, peaches were given to each other as precious gifts.

We not only have the earliest written records, but also a large amount of archaeological evidence. Scientists have discovered wild peach pits left over from the consumption of ancient humans more than 6,000 years ago at the Hemudu site in Zhejiang. In 2015, Zhou Zekun's team from the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered a peach pit fossil called "Kunming Peach", which is 2.6 million years old, providing the latest strong evidence that the peach species originated in China.

A 2.6 million-year-old wild peach fossil - "Kunming peach" (Image source: Reference [3])

Because of its delicious fruit, peaches spread westward to Persia along the Silk Road through Central Asia in the 2nd century BC. In the following hundreds of years, they first reached Rome and then spread across the European continent with the footprints of the Roman legions. After Columbus discovered the New World in the 15th century, peaches were brought to America by European immigrants and have since become one of the important tree species in the temperate regions of the world.

At present, peaches are grown in nearly 100 countries around the world, with China producing the most, followed by the United States, Japan, Italy, etc. During this long process of dissemination and cultivation, the hardworking and intelligent Chinese people have made great contributions to making peaches more delicious for all mankind.

In the "Explanation of Wood" chapter of Er Ya, the first comprehensive dictionary in China, there is a record of peach varieties: "Xie, Jingtao. Mao, Dongtao. Si, Shantao..." Later, with the continuous advancement of grafting and cultivation technology, peach varieties increased further. In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, in Qi Min Yao Shu written by Jia Sixie, the number of peach varieties recorded reached nearly 20.

Today, delicious peaches have evolved into five major categories: soft and juicy honey peaches, peculiarly shaped flat peaches, colorful and crispy nectarines, thin-skinned and yellow-fleshed yellow peaches, and sweet-smelling hairy peaches, with more than 1,000 edible varieties, and more than 60% of them were bred by Chinese.

A. Honey peach B. Flat peach C. Nectarine D. Yellow peach E. Hairy peach (Photo source: Photo by the author)

A cluster of peach blossoms blooms without an owner

Lovely deep red and light red

Compared with plum, pear, apricot and plum, peach blossom, which belongs to the Rosaceae family, is more gorgeous and beautiful. While eating the fruit, the ancients also began to find spiritual comfort in the natural beauty of peach blossom. From March to April every year, peach blossoms "bloom before they have leaves". The red flowers are fragrant, charming and beautiful, like pieces of red clouds, and set off by the green trees and weeping willows, forming a beautiful spring scene of red peaches and green willows, and bright flowers and bright flowers. Therefore, in the writings of literati and poets, peach blossoms have become a symbol of spring.

Based on the analysis of phenological monitoring data over the past 30 years, scientists have found that due to global warming, the peach flowering period in my country has been advanced by 10 days compared to the 1980s. It is no wonder that everyone feels that spring seems to have come earlier in recent years.

Because it originated in China, is the most common and earliest flower in spring, and has beautiful flowers and abundant large fruits, peach has naturally become the ideal object for ancient people to praise women. Peach buds are tender and lovely. When they bloom, they are gorgeous and dazzling, like colorful clouds. When they fall, they are colorful and picturesque. The beautiful peach blossom has become the object of praise and praise by countless literati. Out of love for nature, in the eyes of poets, wherever there are peach blossoms, there is a beautiful place, which is why the "flower" in "beautiful as a flower" refers to peach blossoms.

While selecting fruit tree varieties, they also started to select ornamental peach varieties. Among the main varieties of peach, Shouxing peach and Bitao are mainly for viewing. On this basis, through generations of parental hybridization, many different flower shapes such as single petals and double petals were selected, and the colors ranged from pink, red, pure white to various variegated colors (see the figure below). In recent years, with the widespread application of molecular breeding technology, the breeding cycle of peaches has been greatly shortened, and the efficiency of targeted improvement of excellent traits has also been significantly improved.

Different flower shapes of ornamental peach: single petal type (A), plum blossom type (B), chrysanthemum type (C), rose type (D), peony type (E) and bell type (F) (Photo credit: A and B photographed by Tan Jizhao; C, D, E, F photographed by Xun Lulu)

In addition, in order to make the peach more graceful, people also intentionally cultivate more diverse tree shapes during the cultivation process. At present, in addition to the common straight branches, there are also drooping branches, short-stemmed longevity peaches, and broom-shaped peaches that are wide at the top and narrow at the bottom like a broom. At present, there are about 100 varieties of ornamental peaches in the world, and nearly half of them are from Chinese people.

Ornamental peaches with different branch types (from top to bottom: straight branch type, dense branch type, and drooping branch type) (Image source: Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Conclusion

Since the poem "Taoyao", the beautiful peach blossoms have not only become the ancestor of poetry and prose about beauties, but the sweet peaches have also become a popular fruit. The value of peaches and their many beautiful meanings are deeply rooted in the spiritual world of the Chinese nation. Peaches make our lives more colorful.

References

[1] Flora of China Mobile Edition

[2] Sun He. A Study on Wedding Poems in the Book of Songs. Young Writers, 2023, 17

[3] 2.6 million-year-old peach pit fossil. Biological Evolution, 2016, 01

[4] Yu Mingliang et al. 70 Years of Fruit Tree Research in New China - Peach. Journal of Fruit Science, 2019, 36 (10)

[5] Yuan Zhaohe et al. Research progress in molecular breeding of fruit trees. Journal of Nanjing Forestry University (Natural Science Edition). 2021, 45(04)

[6] Wu Qijun. A Survey of Plant Names and Figures. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2018.

[7] Cao Yin et al. Complete Tang Poems. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2013

[8] Wang Lirong. Historical review and prospects of peach variety improvement in China. Journal of Fruit Science, 2021, 38 (12)

[9] Huang Wenxin et al. Peach culture in poetry and its implications for gardening. Guangdong Garden, 20216, 38(02)

[10] Xiang Jinjin. Comparative Study of Peach Culture in East Asia. Shaanxi Normal University, 2021

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Produced by Science Popularization China

Author: Li Bo, Shaanxi Institute of Biological Agriculture

Producer丨China Science Expo

Editor: Yinuo

Proofread by Xu Lailinlin

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