What are the flower meanings and legends of the daylily?
The daylily, also known as yellow flower vegetable, golden needle vegetable, deer scallion, Sichuan grass flower, and forget-sorrow grass, is a perennial herbaceous plant with fleshy roots in the Liliaceae family, Hemerocallis genus. It originated in China, but for a long time was not much improved. Now, through improvement, it has become an important ornamental and cut-flower plant, and is also the class with the most varieties among Liliaceae flowers. Let us take a look below at the flower meanings and legends of the daylily!
The flower meanings of the daylily
The flower meanings of the daylily are hidden love, forgetting sorrow, and healing grief. The daylily is China's mother flower, representing loving you forever, Mother! Great maternal love, a kind mother. The daylily is also called forget-sorrow grass, and also represents “forgetting all unhappy things”. In ancient China, whenever a traveler went on a long journey, daylilies would be planted in the northern hall to express the mother's longing for her child and to let the mother forget the worry of missing her son.
The alternative names of the daylily
The daylily has many alternative names, including golden needle, yellow flower vegetable, forget-sorrow grass, child-bearing grass, healing grief, deer arrow, brain-strengthening vegetable, calming vegetable, and green scallion flower, among others. In English, the daylily is called tiger lily. When eaten, it is mostly called golden needle, yellow flower vegetable, and so on. It is cultivated in both northern and southern parts of China. Quxian County in Sichuan is known as the “Hometown of Chinese Yellow Flowers”, Shaodong County and Qidong County have been named “places of origin of yellow flower vegetable”, while the yellow flower vegetable produced in Qingyang, Gansu has excellent quality and is sold overseas.
The legend of the daylily
According to legend, before the Dazexiang Uprising, Chen Sheng's family was very poor. Because there was no rice in the home to cook, he had to go out to beg for food to get by. In addition, due to lack of nutrition, he suffered from generalized edema, with unbearable swelling and pain.
One day, Chen Sheng came begging to the home of a mother and daughter surnamed Huang. Old Mrs. Huang was soft-hearted. Seeing Chen Sheng's pitiful appearance, she let him into the house and steamed three large bowls of daylily flowers for him to eat. For Chen Sheng at that time, the daylily flowers that could relieve hunger and cold were so sweet and delicious, no less than rare delicacies. He wolfed them down, and before long all three large bowls of daylily flowers had gone into his stomach. A few days later, the edema over his whole body subsided. Chen Sheng was very grateful to the Huang mother and daughter, and said he would repay them in the future.
After the Dazexiang Uprising, when Chen Sheng declared himself king, he did not forget the Huang mother and daughter. To thank them for their kindness, he invited them into the palace. Every day wine was served and banquets were held, but none of the countless fine dishes and delicacies could stir Chen Sheng's appetite. Suddenly, Chen Sheng remembered the delicious taste of the daylily flowers from years before, and asked Old Mrs. Huang to steam another bowl for him to eat.
Old Mrs. Huang picked some more daylily flowers and personally steamed them and gave them to Chen Sheng. Chen Sheng picked up the bowl, took just one bite, and found it hard to swallow. He repeatedly said: “What is going on? The taste is not as good as it was back then. This is too strange.” Old Mrs. Huang said, “Actually there is nothing strange about it. It is truly that when hungry, daylily is fragrant, but when used to wine and meat, daylily is bitter!” These words shamed Chen Sheng so much that he fell to his knees and bowed again and again. Old Mrs. Huang repeatedly said: “You must not, you must not”, and hurriedly helped Chen Sheng up.
From then on, Chen Sheng kept the Huang mother and daughter in the palace to specially cultivate daylilies, and he ate them often. At the same time, he gave the daylily two other names, one being “forget-sorrow grass” and the other being “yellow flower vegetable”. Because Old Mrs. Huang's daughter was named Jinzhen, and the leaves of the daylily are shaped like needles, people also called it “golden needle vegetable”. Once the news spread, people began using daylily roots to treat edema conditions. Later, this was discovered by physicians, and after repeated use it became a commonly used Chinese herbal medicine.