How much do you know about the flower language and legends of the daylily?
The daylily is also known as yellow flower vegetable, golden needle vegetable, deer scallion, Sichuan grass flower, forget-sorrow grass, and so on. It is a perennial herbaceous plant with fleshy roots in the lily family, genus Hemerocallis, native to China, but for a long time it was not much improved. Now, after improvement, it has become an important ornamental and cut flower, and it is also the category with the most varieties among lily family flowers. Let us take a look below at the flower language and legends of the daylily!
The flower language of the daylily
The flower language of the daylily is hidden love, forgetting sorrow, and curing 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 it 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, letting the mother forget the sorrow of missing her child.
Other names of the daylily
The daylily has many other names, including golden needle, yellow flower vegetable, forget-sorrow grass, suitable-for-a-boy grass, grief cure, deer arrow, brain-health vegetable, calm-spirit vegetable, green scallion flower, and so on. In English, the daylily is called tiger lily, and when eaten it is mostly called golden needle, yellow flower vegetable, and so on. It is cultivated throughout northern and southern China. Quxian County in Sichuan is called “China's home of yellow flowers,” Shaodong County and Qidong County have been named “place of origin of yellow flower vegetable,” and the yellow flower vegetable produced in Qingyang, Gansu, is of excellent quality and sold far overseas.
The legend of the daylily
It is said that before the Daze Township Uprising, Chen Sheng's family was very poor. Because there was no rice in the home to cook, he had to go out begging to get by. In addition, due to lack of nutrition, he suffered from generalized edema, with unbearable swelling and pain.
One day, Chen Sheng begged at the home of a mother and daughter surnamed Huang. Old Mrs. Huang was soft-hearted. When she saw Chen Sheng's pitiful appearance, she let him into the house and steamed three big 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 delicacies from mountains and seas. He wolfed them down, and before long all three big bowls of daylily flowers had gone into his belly. A few days later, the generalized edema subsided. Chen Sheng was very grateful to the Huang mother and daughter and said he would repay them in the future.
After the Daze Township Uprising, when Chen Sheng proclaimed 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 set out and banquets were held, but none of the countless fine dishes and rare delicacies could arouse Chen Sheng's appetite. Suddenly, Chen Sheng remembered the delicious taste of the daylily flowers from those years before, so he 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 kept saying: “What is going on? The taste is not as good as it was back then. This is too strange.” Old Mrs. Huang said, “There is really nothing strange about it. It is truly that in times of hunger daylily flowers are fragrant, and when one is used to wine and meat, daylily flowers are bitter!” These words shamed Chen Sheng so much that he knelt on the ground 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, specially to plant daylilies, and he often ate them. 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 Golden Needle, and the shape of the daylily leaves is like a needle, people also called it “golden needle vegetable.” Once the news spread, people in great numbers used daylily roots to treat edema conditions. Later this was discovered by physicians, and after repeated use it became a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine.