Spend limited energy on things that really matter.

Last month, below the office, gardeners removed a pile of hydrangea seedlings from their cars, planted them neatly into the ground, and divided them into three clumps. Soon, these seedlings, which are only more than ten centimeters high, appear bright green and yellow flowers and bones at the top, and they are crowded together. After another week, why, it blossomed, pink, blue, blue and purple, with flowers in full bloom.

Everything is incredibly fast, just like the screen-scanning hotspots that change every three or five days in moments, and also like this era.

My family has also planted two pots of hydrangea this year. They are seedlings distributed in a friend's garden. They are healthy and handsome, but their growth is relatively slow. I'm in no hurry. Let it grow slowly.

For a long time, I have no feeling for hydrangea flowers, probably because the flowers are so dense that I feel out of breath. Of course, A's bear's paw B's arsenic, there are many friends around like it very much.

The light blue hydrangea does have the cool feeling of summer, and its temperament is also very refined. One of its most famous horticultural varieties, called Endless Summer, endless summer, the name is also very beautiful. According to reports, the characteristic of endless summer is that it can also blossom on the new branches produced in the same year, making a new breakthrough in breeding technology. In addition, the number of flowers is also very large, as the name implies, the florescence lasts throughout the summer.

One of the major characteristics of hydrangea is that flowers change color, that is, flowers of different colors can bloom in soils with different acidity and alkalinity. Blue hydrangea blossoms in acidic soil, while in alkaline soil, flowers turn red, the so-called "acid blue, alkali red"-the content of aluminum sulfate in the soil determines the color of the flowers. When in full bloom, the edge of the flower first turns blue or red, slowly faints to the whole flower, and then turns to blue-purple or pink-purple when the flower is about to bloom.

Little green buds

Discoloration starts at the edge.

Pink flowers bloom in alkaline soil

These hydrangeas downstairs in the office, in the same piece of soil, the flowers are blue and red, I do not know what method is used.

However, this feature is just a facade. The real characteristic of hydrangea is that it has two different kinds of flowers: sterile flowers and fertile flowers.

What you usually see is sterile flowers that look like a big ball on the branch and are vividly called "mop heads" by foreigners. A standard sterile flower has 4 "petals" and often has 5 or 3 petals.

The petal is in quotation marks, which means that it is not a real petal. In essence, it is a petal-like, specialized sepal. Of course, sterile flowers are also flowers, and the raised spot in the center of the flower is the extremely degraded petals and stamens. Usually this little dot is like this, but it will blossom when the conditions are right or when it is in a good mood, but it just can't get married and have children.

Degenerated florets sometimes bloom.

Real flowers, that is, fertile flowers, are very small and few in number, hidden in a clump of sterile flowers. The true flower has a cup-shaped calyx tube and 5-lobed sepals, 5 slender petals of the same color as the sterile flower, 10 stamens and 3 stigmas. But according to my observation, there are also a lot of four stigmas.

Fertile flowers hidden below

In the bud state, it is easier to observe fertile flowers. On the cyan buds, five tweezed petals are clearly visible. At this point, bees are obviously more discerning than our naked eyes.

I always thought hydrangea was like a fake flower, but I later found out that the reason is that its flowers (mainly sterile flowers) can bloom for a long time. This feature makes hydrangea very suitable for making cut flowers, bouquets and even dried flowers. Hydrangea can often be seen in foreign interior design pictures. Hydrangea can blossom for a long time because a large number of sterile flowers do not need to waste energy to blossom and bear fruit. Of course, the energy saved can be "always beautiful".

Both indoor and outdoor are very photogenic, pictured from the network.

The genus name Hydrangea comes from the Greek root hydro water + angeion jar, which means that the fruit of this genus is shaped like a kettle. The adjective macrophylla means big leaf. The leaves of Hydrangea are opposite, the leaf blade apex is long-pointed, the base is cuneate, the margin is coarsely serrated, the lateral veins are arcuate and the reticular veins are well developed.

Leaves cross opposite, margin coarsely toothed

Compared with hydrangeas, bees that visit Hydrangea macrophylla var.normalis are obviously much less laborious. Contrary to hydrangea, the number of fertile flowers is much more than that of sterile flowers, and all of them are arranged in a horizontal plane at the end of the branch, so there is no need to bother to pull out the clouds to see the sun. Sterile flowers are arranged on the outer edge of the inflorescence-usually eight-like holding hands in a circle with a fertile wreath inside.

In horticulture, mountain hydrangea is also more common and has many colors. Its leaf shape is very similar to Hydrangea, and the plant is usually taller. It is listed as a variety of Hydrangea in Chinese Flora.

Mountain hydrangea

Fertile flower stamens 10, stigmas 3

There is a kind of flower, which looks very similar to mountain hydrangea at first glance, such as butterfly playing pearl (Viburnum plicatum f.tomentosum) and Tianmu Qionghua (Viburnum opulus subsp. Calvescens). Their inflorescences are also composed of a bunch of small fertile flowers in the center and a striking circle of sterile flowers on the edge. In the past, my friends often sent pictures to ask, but I was foolish to tell them apart. This time, I have studied it carefully and found that it is not difficult to distinguish it.

Photo taken by Tianmu Qionghua Yan Chao

Butterfly Opera Pearl Flower June Nanshan Snow Photo

Butterflies play with beads and Qionghua, and so on, all come from the genus Prunus of the family Polygonaceae. The most direct and accurate way to distinguish between Hydrangea and Hydrangea is to count stamens: 5 stamens of Hydrangea and 10 fertile stamens of Hydrangea. For plants, the most essential difference is the difference between sexual organs.

The stamens of the genus Carpinus are all 5.

In addition, there is a simple difference: the sterile flower center of Hydrangea has a raised dot (extremely degraded flower), and the petal-shaped sepals are usually 4. The sterile flower center of the genus pod has no dots and is usually 5-lobed-not 5-merous. Because pods are Corolla flowers, there are long or short Corolla tubes below Corolla lobes.

There are protruding spots in the center of Hydrangea sterile flower, but there are no pods.

Both pods and hydrangeas have obviously chosen the same path in evolution: sterile flowers are only responsible for the function of attracting bees to attract butterflies, while unattractive fertile flowers specialize in reproduction and are only responsible for giving birth to children and inheriting families. Flowers, like people, have limited energy. Through this division of labor, they are successful elites who "devote their limited energy to what is really important."

In the age of fragments, this is a rare advantage, and it is also a goal that I have been working hard for.

The article and plant pictures (except for the origin) are all original by the author.

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