Heather smells so "dirty", why is it planted all over the streets?

There is a popular saying: "If you can't accept my worst, then you don't deserve my best." The reverse logic is "If you have enjoyed my best, then you deserve my worst."

Hey! Your Lie in April.

April is the lie of heather. People are used to enjoying its red fruits in the bleak winter and letting the spring breeze caress its new leaves. Everything is so natural. However, the wind in April makes her throb, and her flowering season has arrived. So overnight, the clouds gather, the east wind is bad; flies gather to chase the stench, and the lonely search has no way to smell the fragrance. In every street and alley, in everyone's nose, the first words when meeting are:

"What's that smell?!"

When I was in middle school, the whole campus was filled with the scent of heather when the season came｜southeasternflora.com

Indescribable smell

Wikipedia describes the smell of heather as "they have a mild, hawthorn-like scent". What is the concept of hawthorn? It was once voted the most unlucky flower in the Western world. Its smell reminds people of the Great Plague of London in the 17th century. People believe that bringing hawthorn flowers indoors will bring bad luck and cause mothers or children to become sick and die.

This is because hawthorn flowers can release a large amount of trimethylamine, which has a strong fishy smell and reminds people of rotting animal/human corpses. When hawthorn flowers fall on your shy cheeks, you may feel a sense of despair that has nothing to do with love.

Flowers of Crataegus monogyna | wikimedia.org

As a "weakened version" of hawthorn flowers, heather does not have a killer like trimethylamine in its volatile components, but it still has many other amine compounds, which interact with each other and eventually mix into a wonderful smell, which happens to be similar to spermine, the main source of semen smell. This smell attracts flies and beetles to pollinate it and produce bright red fruits.

Insects busy among the flowers｜zuditaka / youtube.com

Hedge King

If the independent deciduous Pourthiaea is included, there are more than 40 species of Pourthia in China, such as P. serrulata (syn. P. serratifolia), P. davidsoniae, P. glabra, etc. Their morphological characteristics are similar - evergreen shrubs or small trees, leathery serrated leaves, new or old leaves are red, small white flowers bloom in April and May, and red or yellow fruits are produced. Their accurate classification between species basically depends on some microscopic characteristics. When there are no flowers and fruits, they are even more indistinguishable from other trees, and are often confused with common garden trees such as osmanthus and privet.

Leaves and fruits of Photinia glabra｜KENPEI / wikimedia.org

Photinia × fraseri is a hybrid of Photinia fraseri and Photinia fraseri. It first appeared in the Fraser Nursery in Birmingham, Alabama, USA in 1940. Its new leaves in spring are bright red and more eye-catching than its parents. It is highly ornamental and is known as the "king of hedges". There are many varieties of Photinia fraseri, such as "Red Robin", which has won the Royal Horticultural Society Award and is the most widely planted variety of Photinia in the world. It is translated as "Red Robin" in China, but it should actually be translated as "Red Robin".

Photinia fraseri variety "Red Robin"｜Jean-Jacques MILAN / wikimedia.org

It is common for large heather trees to bloom, but we rarely see red-leafed heather blooming. This is because the main use of red-leafed heather is as a hedge, and hedges need to be pruned and topped frequently. The heather hedges we see are generally only one meter high, but if you let a red-leafed heather grow, it will not only bloom every year, but also grow to four or five meters high like its parent. Therefore, red-leafed heather can also be planted alone and serve as the main framework and focal plant in garden design.

Photinia flowers and fruits in full bloom｜Wouter Hagens / wikimedia.org

It is also a pedestrian tree

Whether it is a tree or a shrub, an adult heather has a perfect dome-shaped crown, dense branches and leaves, and lovely shade. The ancients planted it in the courtyard very early, admiring its new leaves in spring, enjoying its shade in summer, and viewing its red fruits in winter. In addition, heather is hardy and easy to grow, suitable for both north and south, and is very popular. However, the morphological characteristics of heather are similar to many plants, and the level of taxonomy in ancient times was not very high. Therefore, although there are records of heather in ancient medical, natural history, and gardening books, they are generally copied from each other, and the heather recorded in ancient books may not be the heather defined by botany today.

Heather trimmed into balls｜atreeaday.com

The earliest form of heather was written as "Shi Nan". According to Li Shizhen, because it "grows in the sunny places between rocks, it is named heather". The first person who said this must have never seen wild heather, otherwise he must have mistaken the species. The most common distribution areas of heather plants are hillside shrubs and mixed woods. Because there are other large trees around, the wild environment of heather is mostly shady. Modern botanists have given the Chinese name "Shi Nan" to some alpine plants in the Ericaceae family, such as Calluna, Erica, etc. These alpine plants are truly "grown in the sunny places between rocks" and deserve this name.

Top is Calluna vulgaris｜Pmg / wikimedia.org, bottom is Christmas heather (Erica canaliculata)｜KENPEI / wikimedia.org

The descriptions of Photinia in ancient books range from brief mentions like Li Shizhen's to detailed descriptions of its morphology. However, it is still believed that the species was mistaken. For example, Bencao Yanyi says:

Heather, the leaves are like the smaller loquat leaves, but the back is hairless, smooth and not wrinkled. It blooms in January and February. In winter, two leaves become flower buds. When the buds open, there are more than 15 flowers in them, which are the same size as Chinese toon flowers and very small. Each bud is about the size of a bullet and forms a ball. One flower has six leaves, and one flower has seven or eight balls. They are light green, and the leaves are slightly red. When the flowers bloom, the stamens are full of flowers, but you can only see the stamens, not the flowers. When the flowers are over, the green leaves of last year fall off and new leaves gradually grow.

It is difficult to determine what kind of plant this is from the "detailed" description of more than 100 words. For example, the leaf shape is basically correct, but the flowering period does not match. As for the two-leaf buds, one bud and one ball, etc., it feels more like a foggy feeling. And the description of one flower and six leaves, light red at the end of the leaves, and old leaves all faded, is quite similar to the common Daphniphyllum macropodum in the south. According to records, Heather was also called "Rangmu" in the old Shu area, which means that its branches and leaves grow straight up and do not interfere with each other, which seems to mean humility.

The genus of the genus Daphne in the family Daphneaceae｜KENPEI / wikimedia.org

There are also some more accurate descriptions, such as the "Compendium of Materia Medica":

Heather grows in the valleys of Huayin, and is now found in both the north and south. It grows on rocks, and some are very tall. It grows between rivers and lakes, and its leaves are like loquat leaves, with small thorns, and it does not wither in winter. It produces clusters of white flowers in spring and small red fruits in autumn.

But we still cannot conclude that this is heather, because heather is too difficult to identify. Similar plants in the Rosaceae family, such as Stranvaesia and Sorbus, and even more distant plants, such as Viburnum, all have the above characteristics.

Hundreds of poems on Heather

It seems that if people who study plants also have a penchant for textual research, they will get themselves into a state of confusion, but they will be deeply trapped in it and unable to extricate themselves. In this respect, they are not as free and easy as the ancient poets, who did not know what plants they planted in their gardens, but called them all heather anyway, and then used the objects to express their aspirations, leaving behind famous verses that will be passed down through the ages.

Heather Fruit｜Eagle Dance/Official Account "Bird Life"

Poems about heather probably started in the Tang Dynasty, and there are more than a hundred poems handed down to this day, but strangely, none of them complain about its unpleasant smell. Perhaps poets valued its leaves and fruits more, so they tolerated its smell. But there are also some poets with strange tastes, such as Lin Hong of the Ming Dynasty, who wrote in a poem:

A dog lies in the garden on the warm grass, birds are singing and the heather smells fragrant.

I guess he did it for the sake of neatness and balance.

Let's compare it with pear blossoms. The smell of pear blossoms is worse than that of heather, and in the Western world they have the bad reputation of being called "semen trees". But among the thousands of poems about pear blossoms in China, there are many that directly mention its fragrance. Perhaps ancient Chinese literati tended to praise the good qualities of traditional flowers, such as the shape and color of pear blossoms, and the shape, new leaves, and red fruits of heather, and left the bad reputation to unpopular weeds, such as thorns and jujubes.

Pear blossom, a member of the Rosaceae family｜Elf / wikimedia.org

However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the ancients were particularly sensitive to smells. According to the analysis of the components of heather essential oil, it was found to contain a large amount of benzaldehyde and a small amount of phenylethanol. Benzaldehyde has an almond flavor, while phenylethanol has a rose scent. Here are two lines from Bai Juyi's "Heather Tree":

The spring buds are burning like thousands of lamps, the summer buds are burning like hundreds of incense sticks.

Baihexiang is a kind of incense made from a mixture of various spices. Imagine the rose fragrance with almond flavor rising slowly under the scorching sun of early summer, mixed with a hint of fishy smell, how rich and stimulating it is, comparable to the new leaves as red as flames! Perhaps Bai Juyi and Kukai once sat hand in hand under the shade of the tree, feeling the origin of life in the intoxication of this fragrance and thinking about the complicated fate of that woman.

A variety of Photinia fraseri "Camilvy" | pflanzmich.de

In the 77th chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, Jia Baoyu was sad about Qingwen's expulsion and mentioned the "Acacia tree in Duanzheng Tower" to explain that the withering and flourishing of plants and trees are related to people's fortune. The acacia tree is not the catalpa tree in In Search of the Supernatural. Another nickname for it is the Duanzheng tree. According to the Biography of Yang Taizhen, after Emperor Xuanzong sentenced Yang Guifei to death at Mawei Posthouse, he continued to travel west to the side of Fufeng Road and saw a large heather tree with a lovely shape. Emperor Xuanzong watched for a long time and thought of the spring nights in Duanzheng Tower of Huaqing Palace in the past, but now they are separated forever, so he named the heather Duanzheng Tree.

The beautiful trees and green clouds beside the road are sad. I once served in the golden carriage at the post station.

The growth and withering of plants are like human affairs, and the green shade is lonely in Hanling in autumn.

Tang Wen Tingyun's "Inscription on the Upright Tree"

The towering heather trees｜A. Barra / wikimedia.org

The name of the acacia tree also appeared at about the same time. In Wudu Fu, it says: "The tree of Nanliu is the tree of acacia." Nanliu is a knot of nanmu. Why does it symbolize acacia? Perhaps it has the same origin as the story of Han Ping's wife in In Search of the Gods. In the early version, it was nanmu, and in the later version it became zimu. The literati in the late Tang Dynasty confused nanmu and heather, but the meaning of "acacia tree" did not change. (The above origin of the name "acacia tree" is purely speculation and has not been verified in detail)

The heartbroken general was reburied and the incense in the brocade bag is still there to recall the past.

Over the years I have hated the Acacia tree because it does not grow intertwined branches when spring comes.

The jade grass is growing on the Snow Maiden's tomb, and the jade lotus is withering in the Concubine's pond.

The old song of Nichang is in Feishuang Palace, and the dream is shattered and the soul is shocked.

Visiting Huaqing Palace Again by Xu You of the Tang Dynasty

In short, after the late Tang Dynasty, heather had two meaningful nicknames, Acacia and Duanzheng, and became a symbol of the love legend of Li and Yang. When the story was passed down to the Qing Dynasty, its version also changed. For example, the acacia tree mentioned by Jia Baoyu (Cao Xueqin) was next to the Duanzheng Building, not next to the Fufeng Road in the early version.

In the second and third chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Baoyu was reading under a peach tree. The wind blew the peach blossoms all over the book. Baoyu then threw the book and the petals into the pond, and the flowers floated away. Daiyu said that if they flowed to a place where people lived, they would still be ruined. Daiyu was right. Flowers are caught in the current and carried away. How can they decide for themselves?

Sitting in the thatched hut, I see the autumn leaves falling and the faint sound of birds among the bushes on the hill.

I don’t know that the rain came on the mountains at night, and the heather flowers are blooming in the early morning.

Song He Zhengping's "Quatrain"

Author: Frost Moth

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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