What are the Four Gentlemen of Flowers?

The Four Gentlemen of Flowers are: Plum, Orchid, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum.

(1) Plum is native to southern China, has been cultivated for more than three thousand years, whether for ornamental or fruit trees have many varieties. Many types are not only cultivated in the open ground for ornamental purposes, but can also be planted as potted flowers, making plum stakes. The flowers can be used to extract flavorings, and the flowers, leaves, roots and seed kernels can be used as medicine. The fruit can be eaten, salted or thousand system, or smoked into the plum human medicine, cough, diarrhea, fluid, quench thirst effect. Plum can resist root nematode damage, can be used as a rootstock of fruit trees. Plum is China's top ten flowers, and orchids, bamboo, chrysanthemums together as the Four Gentlemen, and pine, bamboo and known as the "three cold friends". In traditional Chinese culture, the plum blossom, with its noble, strong and modest character, gives people the incentive to be determined to work hard. In the cold, the plum bloomed in the first of a hundred flowers, only the world and spring.

(2) The orchids in the traditional Chinese famous flowers only refer to a number of species of ground orchids distributed in Chinese orchid plants, such as spring orchids, huilan, jianlan, ink orchids and cold orchids, etc., which is usually referred to as "Chinese orchids". This kind of orchids is very different from the tropical orchids with big and colorful flowers, without eye-catching gaudiness, large flowers and leaves, but with simple, quiet and elegant temperament, which is very much in line with the aesthetic standard of the Oriental people. It has been cultivated in China for more than a thousand years.

The Chinese have always regarded orchids as a symbol of purity and elegance, and together with "Plum, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum", they are known as the "Four Gentlemen". Usually, "Orchid Chapter" is used as a metaphor for the beauty of poetry and literature, and "Orchid Crossing" is used as a metaphor for the truth of friendship. In May 1985, the orchid was honored as one of the four most famous flowers in China.

(3) Bamboo, light but not frivolous. Its stems are different from square and round, its color has a green and purple points; bamboo without the heart and nature, mountain and wild roadside, courtyard and temple, as the case may be, all seasons Maoran; pectus wind Yang its strong joints, bathed in spring rain shrugged its jade bamboo shoots, Phi moonlight dew of its slender, snuggled up with the cliffs to show its lightness of spirit; alongside the window and planted to enjoy the moon cast of the beautiful posture; pool and planted, Gu wave pan of the shadow. Song Dynasty Su Dongpo said: "I would rather eat meat, not live without bamboo." Ancient love of bamboo, which can be seen a spot carry on.

(4) chrysanthemum, Li and not delicate. The chrysanthemum is proud of the frost and blooms in the time when all the flowers are withering; it is not afraid of killing, and shows its delicate state in all directions. The gardening of chrysanthemums and wild chrysanthemums are different, wild chrysanthemums, dotted with village houses and hedges, born everywhere, without artificial; and the gardening of chrysanthemums, from the spring under the seed to the autumn of the bloom, during which the rule of the ground brewing soil, anti-drying and considering the humidity, picking the head of the leaf pinch, catching the insect branches, and preventing the rain and avoiding the frost, so that the art of art of the chrysanthemums who are rarely free. From ancient times to the present, generations of chrysanthemum artists have cultivated the chrysanthemum with great devotion, so that it has a wide variety of types and gestures. It is said that the beauty of chrysanthemum is three parts from the heavenly work and seven parts from the manpower. The people of art chrysanthemum work hard all year round to help the heavenly work with the manpower, and the beauty of chrysanthemum is really the realization of the unity of the heavenly and human beings.