This tree is very afraid of being tickled, go and try it!

Crape myrtle is a common garden flower and now there are hundreds of cultivated varieties. According to the ancients' classification, the red one can be called red crape myrtle, the white one can be called silver crape myrtle, and the light purple one can be called green crape myrtle .

Chiwei

Silver Wei

Cuiwei

01

The origin of the name "Ziwei"

According to the records in "Quan Fang Bei Zu" of the Southern Song Dynasty, the name of Crape Myrtle appeared in the Tang Dynasty .

This tree grows in the woods and wilds. Since the Tang Dynasty built the Silk Road Pavilion, it rested its roots under it. It has always accompanied the poets and officials in exercising imperial power, so it is called Ziwei.

The central government system of the Tang Dynasty was a system of three provinces and six ministries. The Secretariat, one of the three provinces, was renamed the Ziwei Province during the Kaiyuan period of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang . A kind of flower planted in the Ziwei Province government office was called the Ziwei flower. Later, the radical "grass" was added to it, and it became Ziwei.

Bai Juyi once wrote the poem "Sitting alone at dusk, who is my companion? The crape myrtle flowers accompany my lover", which means that he was an official in the Crape Myrtle Province, and when he worked overtime at night, the crape myrtle flowers in the yard accompanied him.

The ornamental plants planted in the government offices of the imperial city must have had some outstanding features. The advantages of the crape myrtle were clearly described in a poem by Yang Wanli, "Who says flowers don't stay red for ten days? The crape myrtle blooms for half a year." This means that the crape myrtle has a long flowering period , especially in northern China, where there is a lack of flowering trees in summer and only the crape myrtle can bloom under the scorching sun.

02

What do crape myrtle flowers look like?

If you look closely at the flowers of crape myrtle, you can find some interesting things. For example, the flowers of the plants we usually see mostly have a base number of 3, 4 or 5.

What does it mean? For example, the tepals of a daylily flower are composed of three sepals and three petals, which is called a cardinality of three. The same is true for cardinality of four or five.

As for the crape myrtle, it has a base of 6, with a calyx divided into 6 lobes and 6 petals . Although there are dozens of stamens, 6 of them have particularly long filaments with brown anthers at the top, while the filaments of the remaining stamens are relatively short and the anthers are yellow.

These two types of stamens have different functions. The short stamens are brightly colored and are specifically used to attract insects. The pollen they produce has basically no reproductive ability and is a reward to pollinating insects.

The pollen that is actually used for reproduction comes from the six long stamens . When insects eat the pollen from the short stamens, the fertile pollen from the long stamens rubs against them and is then passed on to the pistil of the next flower.

03

Is it true that crape myrtle is ticklish?

There is a widely circulated saying about crape myrtle, which says that it is ticklish. If you touch the trunk with your hand, the branches will tremble. Is this true?

In fact, this is only because the branches of the crape myrtle are of relatively uniform thickness, and the flowers are concentrated at the top of the stems, making it a bit "top-heavy" . Even the slightest air flow can cause it to tremble, let alone touching the trunk directly.

However, when the trunk of the crape myrtle matures, the skin will fall off and it will feel smooth to the touch, which really feels good. "Youyang Zazu" from the Tang Dynasty said: "Crape myrtle, people in the north call it the monkey Langda tree, saying that it has no skin and even monkeys cannot climb it", which means that the trunk of the crape myrtle is too smooth and even monkeys cannot climb it.

The bare trunk of the crape myrtle

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