Orchid Open Course: Taught by Professor Liu Yan of Beijing Forestry University
The course takes traditional flowers - plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, peony, Chinese peony, Chinese rose, lotus, ginkgo, and magnolia - as its subjects. From the perspectives of science and flower culture, and from the two dimensions of flowers as material wealth and spiritual wealth, it introduces, with different emphases according to each flower, the floral names, germplasm resources, ornamental characteristics, ecological habits, ...
The course takes traditional flowers - plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, peony, Chinese peony, Chinese rose, lotus, ginkgo, and magnolia - as its subjects. From the perspectives of science and flower culture, and from the two dimensions of flowers as material wealth and spiritual wealth, it introduces, with different emphases according to each flower, the floral names, germplasm resources, ornamental characteristics, ecological habits, cultivation history, flower culture, and uses of famous flowers. The course was refined on the basis of the national-level excellent courses "Ornamental Botany," "Landscape Floriculture," and the Beijing municipal-level excellent course "Landscape Dendrology." The course explains profound subjects in simple terms. Through studying this course, students can understand the cultivation and historical and cultural origins of China's famous flowers and China's broad and profound Chinese flower culture; understand the overview of wild resources and cultivated varieties of China's famous flowers, improve their aesthetic appreciation of flowers, and stimulate further interest in learning, thereby playing a role in promoting Chinese culture and passing on Chinese material and spiritual civilization.
Orchids are precious ornamental plants. According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 700 genera and more than 20,000 species worldwide, and many new varieties are discovered and cultivated each year. In plant taxonomy, Chinese orchids (Guolan) belong to the monocotyledonous perennial orchid family. Chinese orchids mainly fall into seven major categories: Chunlan (Cymbidium goeringii), Lianbanlan (Cymbidium tortisepalum), Huilan (Cymbidium faberi), Jianlan (Cymbidium ensifolium), Hanlan (Cymbidium kanran), Molan (Cymbidium sinense), and Chunjian (Cymbidium goeringii var. longibracteatum), with thousands of horticultural varieties. China is a place of origin, and there are also re-exports to Taiwan, China, and Japan. Chinese orchids are perennial herbaceous plants. The roots are fleshy and thick, without root hairs, and have symbiotic fungi. They have pseudobulbs, commonly known as lutou, which are externally wrapped in leaf sheaths; often multiple pseudobulbs are connected together and exist simultaneously in rows. The leaves are linear or sword-shaped, leathery, upright or drooping. The flowers are solitary or in racemes, with many bracts borne on the pedicel. The flowers are bisexual and fragrant. The corolla consists of 3 sepals, 3 petals, and the column. The middle sepal is called the main petal. The lower 2 are the lateral sepals, and the degree of spreading of the lateral sepals is called the hu. The upper 2 petals are upright, relatively thick and fleshy, with tips curled inward, commonly known as the pong. The lower 1 is the lip, which is relatively large and commonly known as the lansun.