Is there a bug in a $10 bayberry?

This year, the plum rains in the south lasted longer than in previous years, and the production of bayberries decreased by 40% to 50%, and the supply was in short supply. The retail price of bayberries exported abroad even reached 8-10 US dollars per piece! Friends who can't eat bayberries have to wipe their saliva and wait another year.

Bayberry production has decreased. Have you eaten bayberry? | Weibo @CCTV.com

I first learned about bayberry when I was very young and read Journey to the West. In the first chapter, the monkeys held a banquet to send the Monkey King off to learn martial arts. This section described many fruits, including the line "crisp plum bayberry, sour and crispy like butter and cream." At that time, I already knew about plums because I often ate them in kindergarten, but I was always curious about what bayberry was.

When I was a few years older and had a few cents of pocket money to buy snacks, I bought a bag of the popular candied fruit snack "Nine-processed Yangmei" one day. When I opened it, I found a dozen dirty black balls pickled in a mess. The sweetness was so nauseating, and the flesh was also rough. It was not as delicious as the same brand of nine-processed tangerine peel, so I threw it all away.

It's a bit sweet, but Calendar Girl thinks it's delicious | yangmei.99114.com

When it comes to eating, I am a person who is prone to psychological trauma. After that preconceived experience, I have never wanted to deal with bayberry in my life. Not only that, I don’t eat things of the same shape. Until now, I still don’t touch small and round foods. If you see me refusing fruits such as cherries, grapes, lychees, pomegranates, and even meatballs and quail eggs one day, don’t be surprised, it’s all thanks to the nine-process bayberry (this is a true story). Having said so much about the dark history between me and bayberry, I still have to talk about bayberry.

Sweet and sour fruit that appeared thousands of years ago

Bayberry (Morella rubra) is a plant of the Myricaceae family and the Myrica genus. However, in the Flora of China, bayberry is still called Myrica rubra. In the APGⅢ classification system, Myrica has become the genus Myrica native to Europe and North America. So far, the Myricaceae family has four genera, the other two are the Comptonia genus native to the United States and the single genus Canacomyrica endemic to New Caledonia.

Fresh bayberry, bright red | sznews.com

According to research, there are several fruits that the Monkey King could not eat in the description of fruits in Journey to the West, but bayberry is not one of them. Among the four genera of the Myricaceae family, only the bayberry genus is a native fruit in China, and it has been cultivated and eaten for more than 2,000 years. Pottery jars containing bayberries have been found in the Mawangdui Western Han Dynasty Tomb in Changsha.

Bayberry is more afraid of cold and is common in the south of the Yangtze River. The earliest records of bayberry are mentioned in ancient books. Lu Jia, a counselor of the Western Han Dynasty who made two diplomatic missions to Nanyue, said in "Travels to Nanyue": "There is a lake on the top of Luofu Mountain, surrounded by bayberry and mountain peach." Dongfang Shuo also said in "Linyi Records": "Linyi produces bayberry, which is as big as a bowl. It is very sour when green, and tastes like cliff honey when red." Linyi is the area of ​​Vietnam today. According to the more mainstream view, the prototype of the Flower and Fruit Mountain in Aolai Kingdom in "Journey to the West" is in Lianyungang, Jiangsu. Although it is north of the Yangtze River, it is not so cold because it is close to the ocean. It should be the northern limit of the distribution of wild bayberry.

Bayberry trees are afraid of cold | chtrip.net

In addition, it is said that there was a place called Fuli Palace in the Shanglin Garden, a royal garden of the Western Han Dynasty, which was specially used to grow southern flowers and trees. Sima Xiangru described "梬肖杨梅" in "Shanglin Fu". Being able to grow bayberry in Shaanxi means that the technology is relatively advanced.

"High-end goods" compared with lychees

Bayberry is a drupe, and the edible part is the fleshy outer skin. It is very sour when half-ripe, but it cannot be stored when ripe. In ancient times, when logistics were not well developed, northerners could only eat pickled bayberry, just like the nine-processed bayberry I ate when I was a child. Therefore, fresh bayberry was a high-end product in ancient times, and it was not easy for people outside the place of origin to eat it. Literati and poets would write poems to commemorate the occasional tasting of it.

Mature bayberry, which should be eaten as soon as possible after picking | flickr

Lychee and bayberry are both southern fruits. Jiang Yan, a writer of the Southern Dynasties known as "the plum man of Jiangzuo", wrote a four-character poem "Ode to Bayberry", which described bayberry as "more precious than lychee, and more fragrant than magnolia", which set a precedent for poets to compare bayberry and lychee. Many poets who followed, for some reason or other, always mentioned lychee when writing about bayberry. For example, Ping Kezheng, who was not sure whether he was from the Song Dynasty or the Tang Dynasty, wrote, "In May, the bayberry forest is full, and I initially thought that one bayberry was worth a thousand gold. The taste is as strong as the grapes from Hebei, and the color is darker than the lychees from southern Shanghai."

Yangmei's home court, Lizhi said it was caught in the crossfire | shxinke.net, manmanbuy.com

Su Shi, a foodie in the Song Dynasty, once said, "I can eat 300 lychees a day and I am willing to live in Lingnan forever." Later, he was demoted to Huizhou for too long and felt depressed. He recalled the delicacies of Jiangsu and Zhejiang in his early years and felt that "the lychees from Fujian and Guangdong and the grapes from Xiliang are not as good as the bayberries from Wu and Yue." When Xu Jie, a university scholar during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, wrote about bayberries, he also mentioned the story of Yang Guifei and lychees, saying, "If Taizhen knew this taste, how could lychees be brought to Chang'an?" I cannot agree with Xu Jie's point of view. At least lychees have a leathery skin and can be preserved for a few more days. If they are replaced with bayberries, they will probably go bad halfway.

The little white worms hidden in bayberry are fruit flies.

The fleshy outer peel of bayberry also brings another problem: because there is no protection, it is particularly susceptible to insect pests. The most common ones are fruit fly larvae, which are also known as bayberry maggots. They are mainly members of the genus Drosophila, such as genetics' good friends D. melanogaster and D. simulans. Fruit flies have strong reproductive capacity and a short life cycle. Once an outbreak occurs, it is difficult to control. Bayberry is a fruit that is eaten directly, so it is not easy to apply ordinary pesticides. Therefore, there is currently no good way to deal with it.

Commonly used material in genetic research, and also a favorite feed for herpetofauna and insect breeding enthusiasts: Drosophila melanogaster | nc3rs.org.uk

When it comes to consumers, the measures they can take are even more limited. After all, not everyone is Bear Grylls. No matter what you say about high protein, insect-phobic people are still afraid of bayberry maggots. The more effective way to deal with it is to soak it in salt water for a while before eating it. The worms will be soaked out, but the appetite may also be soaked away. I hope that students studying biology will play more with fruit flies in the laboratory, strive to develop several effective transgenic fruit flies, and give them more family genetic diseases, so that people who like bayberries can eat them with confidence in the future.

Bayberry flowers are divided into male and female

When the bayberry bears fruit, the whole mountain is covered with red, which is very spectacular. However, bayberry flowers are not common, or in other words, many people don't know that they are flowers when they see them. Like its close relative, the walnut family, the flowers of bayberry are unisexual, wind-pollinated, and have no tepals. However, unlike the walnut family, the flowers of bayberry are dioecious, which is usually said to be male and female trees. If you only plant one tree in your yard, if there are no wild bayberries nearby, you will have no fruit to eat and can only enjoy the shade. When planting on a large scale, it is generally necessary to have 1%-2% male trees.

Male flowers | flickr

Female flowers | flickr

The male inflorescence of bayberry grows solitarily or in clusters in the axils of leaves. The male flowers have 4 to 6 stamens and dark red anthers, which are quite conspicuous when they bloom. It is difficult to say which type of inflorescence it belongs to. It can be called spike-shaped, unisexual flowers, or catkins. Most of the time, it does not droop. However, according to the textbook, catkins can also be upright, so let's call them catkins. The female inflorescence of bayberry is much smaller, and each flower has two red filamentous stigmas. Although there are many flowers on a female inflorescence, usually only the flower at the top can develop into fruit.

Bayberry branches with fruits | hdmcrafts.com

Are there white bayberries? Are they delicious?

After more than 2,000 years of cultivation, there are now many varieties of bayberry, and its main production area is still in the ancient Wuyue area, which is now Zhejiang Province. For example, the water chestnut variety in Yuyao and Cixi, the Dongkui variety in Huangyan, the late rice variety in Zhoushan, etc. There is also a strange one, the white bayberry, which is a white variation of other varieties, and the fruit looks like a ball of suet.

The Compendium of Materia Medica records that "there are three types of bayberry: red, white, and purple. Red is better than white, and purple is better than red." This means that this type of white variety should not be delicious, and white bayberry lacks anthocyanins, has poor adaptability, is very picky about soil, and is easy to drop, making it difficult to plant. When Su Shi was the magistrate of Hangzhou, he wrote a poem for the abbot of Tianzhu Temple, Biancai, "Hearing that Master Biancai returned to Tianzhu and asked him a poem in jest." The last two sentences are "This is not true, and eat white bayberry." Therefore, white bayberry is often called "holy monk."

Have you ever tasted white bayberry? | blog.sina.com.cn

As mentioned earlier in Lu Jia's "Journey to Nanyue", there is a sentence "There is a lake on the top of Luofu Mountain, with bayberry and mountain peach around it." In fact, bayberry is called mountain peach (やまもも) in Japanese. In ancient times, it was often used as a seasonal word in tanka and haiku, such as Matsuo Basho's "The plum rain is dripping, and the bayberries are falling silently" (山桃の落つる音無し五月雨).

Japan is also one of the places where bayberry is produced. Bayberry is the county flower of Tokushima Prefecture and the county tree of Kochi Prefecture. These two counties are located in the warm and humid Shikoku region, which is particularly suitable for bayberry cultivation. They almost cover the supply of bayberry in Japan, especially Tokushima Prefecture, where the bayberry production is close to 70% of the country. In addition to fresh food, bayberry can also be made into beverages, sake and a strange thing called "leaf tea candy", which is used to make tea and is said to improve hay fever.

Yeh Cha Yi | thebase-shop.com

Speaking of wine, I am a little greedy. Since the nine-processed bayberry incident, although I have never touched bayberry again, I drank bayberry wine brewed by the locals in Guizhou Miao Village. It is said that fruit wine has a strong aftereffect, but when I drank this sweet water, I didn’t take it seriously at all. I drank two more bowls, and then went out and was blown by the mountain wind. I didn’t know what was going on. It was seven hours later when I woke up. It turned out that Basha not only has reed pipe dances and sickle shaving, but also three bowls of bayberry wine. This is my second close contact with bayberry, and I miss it quite a bit.

Tokushima-produced bayberry wine looks cute | store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp

I heard that the soy sauce party has not let go of lychees and pineapples, and has also stretched out its magic claws to bayberries_(•̀ω•́ 」∠)_Do you dip bayberries in soy sauce? How to make them delicious?

Author: Frost Moth

This article is from the Species Calendar. Reprinting is prohibited.

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