Is it really good to be weird and call yourself a flower?

Artemisia humilis

Humulus scandens

Alias: saw vine, la rattan, mowing grass

Rabdosia of the cannabinaceae

Annual twining herbs

At home on the Mid-Autumn Festival, I relived the classic film "out of Africa" starring Aunt Mei. The film is based on Danish writer Karen Brickson's autobiography "Out of Africa". I have always been infatuated with Karen's narrator, whose voice has a charming texture over the years, just like Duras's lover's face. After the death of her lover in a plane crash, Karen has a narration that twenty years later is still deeply engraved in my memory:

"if I know a song that belongs to Africa, to giraffes, to African crescent moons, to ploughs in the fields and to coffee pickers, does Africa know my songs?

Do I still have my color over the trembling plain? Will children invent new games in my name? Does the shadow of the full moon fall on the gravel driveway like my figure? Will the eagle of Mount Nikon take care of me? "

Karen's lover, Dennis Finch-Hatton, is also famous. Coincidentally, he was also mentioned in the recent book "the Law of Life". The establishment of a protected area on the Serengeti Prairie in Africa has a lot to do with Dennis's efforts.

How much deep love and how much love do you have to have with the world around you before you can sing such a touching song?

And I also have a song, which is for the weeds around me. Immodestly, I have the same love for wild flowers and weeds as Karen.

Despite the wildfire burning, the spring breeze still flourishes. I'm sorry, Bai Juyi is such a classic poem, the first thing that comes to mind in my mind is the grass. On the southern bank of the Yangtze River, where people often walk, the grass is full of vitality and grows everywhere, occupying large tracts of barren slopes along the riverside. Not only that, even the iron railings along Binjiang Road often become its site, and gardeners often have to cut them off drastically.

Although they are only barbaric weeds, it is time for the grass to blossom, and it is easy to notice. Its flowers are very small and the color is not eye-catching, but it wins in large quantities and tenaciously brushes out the sense of existence.

The floret of humus is a small string of fine fragments, blooming in the leaf axils of the upper branches. When multiple inflorescences are combined, they become terminal panicles that quiver and sway in the wind. Florets are usually green, and they are also common with purple. The perianth, which is five-lobed to the base, was initially regarded as a calyx by me-because it looked so much like the calyx of many flowering plants: green, lanceolate and the margin was membranous and transparent, and the outside was densely hairy.

Male inflorescence

Male bud, furry

Each floret has five stamens, a darker yellowish green color, opposite to perianth lobes. The anther is long strip, the filament is very short, the floret usually droops, as soon as the wind blows, the stamen is crumbling, I see still pity.

At this point, you will find that the perianth and stamens are all of the flower-there is nothing in the flower heart, no pistil. Yes, the flowers mentioned above are all male flowers. Ampelopsis grossedentata is a dioecious plant with unisexual flowers.

Male flower

I didn't seem to have seen its female flower before I came back for autopsy. When I followed the clue to find the female flower, I couldn't help laughing-it was right in front of me, everywhere, but the female flower of Rabdosia humilis looks so strange, just like Avatar, I can't believe it's a flower.

A strangely growing female inflorescence

Female inflorescences are also solitary leaf axils and look more like tender buds: many layers of fluffy green bracts overlap like tiles, and inflorescences usually droop, called pseudocatkins. There is a female flower in each bract, which is only the ovary of half a mung bean. However, there are two long hairy stigmas protruding bracts, which at least confirmed the identity of the flower.

Bracts and stigmas of female flowers

This season, the fruit of the clover has grown, and the achene is bright brown and flat, showing bracts when it is ripe, just like a baby sleeping with a sweet smile in its swaddling clothes. Turning to a book of traditional Chinese medicine, it is said that the herb is "covered with thousands of needles and a piece of benevolence", which is still a real image.

Achene, picture from the network

The mature leaves of Ampelopsis grossedentata are palmately lobed, the edges are neatly serrate, the base is deeply cordate, the adaxially of the leaves are sparsely strigose, and the abaxial spines grow only on the veins of the leaves. It seems that some insects especially like its leaves, and it is easy to find a large number of leaves that have been gnawed so much that they are only scattered in the wild grass. Petiole base has a pair of stipules, the shape is also very strange, like a capital M, but also like a pair of rabbit ears. The young leaves are much more soft and cute, both sides are densely covered with white hair, feel fluffy, and feel very good.

Leaves opposite, papery, petiole long

Be gnawed.

The young leaves are soft and cute.

Stipule

In Chongqing, few people call it grass, and everyone calls it sawing rattan or borage rattan. This is because its stems, petioles and pedicels are covered with prickles and barbs, and every time the hand touches it, it is stinging like a rusty needle. Later, I just wrapped it in a napkin and successfully completed the autopsy.

Stems, branches and petioles all have barb thorns.

Although it is not so comfortable to be stabbed, dissecting the grass brings me great satisfaction as always, and its pistil and stamen and young leaves are so well appreciated, which once again confirms what I often say: no matter how humble the weed is, it can withstand the most critical examination.

What are weeds? According to the definition of American poetess Ella Wheeler Wilcox, it is just a "flower that is not loved". However, love comes from the heart, and the human heart is the most changeable. "there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests" is the best footnote to the uncertainty of the human heart.

Although most people hate weeds, they have also had a brief period of scenery. This native Asian weed was introduced to North America as an ornamental plant in the 18th century and quickly swept across the northern United States and eastern Canada. As a result, it becomes an invasive plant, favored and left out in the cold, full of dramatic reversals.

There are only three species in the genus Ampelopsis. In addition to this species, there is another species distributed in Yunnan, but the third kind has mixed with the status of a world-class star, that is, the famous hops (H. lupulus), an indispensable soul raw material for brewing beer. Northern Sichuan, Xinjiang and Gansu are wild and widely cultivated all over the world.

Humulus is called hop in English, which means hops, because all three kinds of plants of this genus can be used to brew beer. Interestingly, this hop is the same word as the second half of hip-hop. The English name of humus is wild hop or Japanese hop, which means wild hops or Japanese hops.

The female inflorescence of hops, pictured from the network

Name release:

The generic name Humulus comes from humus, meaning "ground", which means that the plant has the habit of creeping growth. The same is true of the word scandens, which means to climb or crawl. When checking the data, it was found that in foreign countries, the scientific name of Ampelopsis grossedentata has been revised to Humulus japonicus, and the original one has been treated as a synonym.

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

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