The classic poem about winter plum blossoms has the following: The tree beside the inkstone washing pond in my house has blooming flowers with faint ink marks. Don't let anyone praise you for the good color, just leave the pure air to fill the universe. There are several plum trees in the corner, and Ling Han is blooming alone. I don't know that there is not enough snow, but there is a faint fragrance coming. I heard plum blossoms blooming in the morning breeze, and they were piled all over the four mountains. How can one transform into hundreds of billions, one plum blossom tree and one blooming man?

Deciduous shrub, up to 4 meters high; often in clusters. Leaves are opposite, papery, oval-ovate to ovate-lanceolate, apex acuminate, entire margin, buds with many imbricate scales. The young branches are square, and the old branches are nearly cylindrical, grey-brown, hairless or sparsely hairy, with lenticels; the scale buds are usually born in the leaf axils of the second-year branches, and the bud scales are nearly round and arranged in an imbricate shape. The outside is pubescent.

Introduction to wintersweet

The leaves are papery to almost leathery, oval, elliptical, sometimes oblong-lanceolate, 5 to 25 cm long and 2 to 8 cm wide. The top is acute to acuminate, sometimes with a tail tip, and the base is acute to rounded; hairless except for sparse hairs on the dorsal veins of the leaves. The flowers are born in the leaf axils of the second-year branches. They bloom first and then the leaves. They are fragrant and 2 to 4 cm in diameter.

The tepals are round, oblong, obovate, oval or spoon-shaped, 5 to 20 mm long and 5 to 15 mm wide, hairless, and the inner tepals are shorter than the outer tepals. , with claws at the base; the stamens are 4 mm long, the filaments are longer or equal to the length of the anthers, the anthers are inwardly curved, hairless, the septum has a short tip, and the staminodes are 3 mm long; the base of the carpel is sparsely hairy, and the style is as long as The chamber is 3 times as long and the base is hairy.

The fruit base is nearly lignified, jar-shaped or obovate-elliptical, 2 to 5 cm long, 1 to 2.5 cm in diameter, with a contracted mouth and a drill-like lanceolate hairy appendage. . The leaves bloom first in late winter. The flowers are solitary in the leaf axils of annual branches. They have short stalks and cup-shaped receptacles. The perianth is arranged in a spiral shape. It is yellow, waxy and has a strong aroma. The flowering period is from November to March of the following year, with most achenes, and the fruiting period is from April to November.