The red spider lily is so beautiful, so why does no one dare to grow it?
The red spider lily is in bloom, and many people know that the red spider lily itself has a special charm, a flower with a mysterious aura, but very few people dare to grow this flower. Why? As a poem goes: "You were born before I was born, and I was born when you were already old." So the red spider lily symbolizes lovers who can never be together. Therefore its meaning is not very good, many people consider it a taboo, so do not grow it.
Buddhist scriptures say: "The red spider lily, blooms for a thousand years, falls for a thousand years, flower and leaf never meet. Love is not bound by cause and effect, fate determines life and death." Legend has it that this flower blooms only in the Yellow Springs, and is the only scenery on the road to the Yellow Springs. When the soul crosses the River of Forgetting, it forgets all that came before, and everything that once was remains on the other shore, blooming into a bewitchingly gorgeous flower.
The red spider lily comes in two kinds, red and white. Legend says the red spider lily blooms in hell, and the white spider lily blooms in heaven. The red spider lily is also called Manjusaka, one of the four flowers in the Lotus Sutra. Manjusaka's original name is Maha Mandarava Manjusaka, meaning the red flower that blooms in the heavenly realm. It blooms in the seventh lunar month, and its flower language is "sorrowful memories". The red spider lily, the flower blooms on the other shore; when the flower blooms you cannot see the leaves, and when there are leaves you cannot see the flower; flower and leaf never see each other, forever missing each other.
Growing habits
Wild varieties grow in gloomy, damp places (graves or roadside in the countryside), and their growing site is red soil, so they are highly cold-tolerant and shade-loving, with a high-temperature limit they can endure of a daily average temperature of 24°C; they like moisture and also tolerate drought, and are accustomed to slightly acidic soil, with loose, fertile humus soil being best. They have a habit of summer dormancy and are extremely easy to propagate; usually a single red spider lily easily grows into a whole patch of red spider lilies.
Cultivation methods
Extremely easy to cultivate, generally it is best to divide the bulbs for planting after flowering; when planting, apply enough base fertilizer, cover the bulbs with soil, and water thoroughly. The red spider lily's black flower bulbs are extremely easy to keep alive; kept moist, they will not die for a year.
Medicinal value
The bulb of the red-flowered red spider lily is warm in nature, pungent and bitter in taste, and toxic; used as medicine it has the effects of inducing vomiting, eliminating phlegm, reducing swelling, relieving pain and detoxifying. But if eaten by mistake, it may cause poisoning; in mild cases vomiting and diarrhea, in severe cases it may cause paralysis of the central nervous system, with danger to life.
According to pharmacological research, the main medicinal components of the red-flowered red spider lily bulb are various lycorine alkaloids and galantamine. Lycorine and its derivatives have certain anti-cancer activity, and can also fight inflammation, reduce fever, calm and induce vomiting, and also have therapeutic effects on amoebic dysentery. Galantamine is a reversible cholinesterase inhibitor, used for paralysis caused by central paralysis diseases such as poliomyelitis, and for myasthenia gravis, etc.
The legend of the red spider lily
Legend says that long, long ago, the edges of the city were covered in great swathes of red spider lilies, that is, Manjusaka. Guarding the red spider lilies were two spirits, a flower spirit named Manju and a leaf spirit named Saka.
They guarded the red spider lilies for thousands of years, but had never met, because when the flower blooms you cannot see the leaves, and when there are leaves you cannot see the flower; flower and leaf never see each other, forever missing each other. They missed each other madly, and were tormented by this pain.
Finally one day, they decided to violate the god's rule and secretly meet once. That year, the Manjusaka's brilliantly red flowers, set off by the eye-catching green, bloomed with exceptional, bewitching beauty. The god blamed them, and this was also to be expected. Manju and Saka were cast into reincarnation, and cursed to never be together, suffering tribulation in the human world life after life.
From then on, Manjusaka was also called the red spider lily, meaning the flower that blooms in heaven; the shape of the flower is like palms praying toward heaven, but it has never appeared in the city again. This flower blooms on the road to the Yellow Springs; each time Manju and Saka reincarnate, when they smell the fragrance of the red spider lily on the road to the Yellow Springs, they remember their former selves, and then swear never to part, and in the next life fall once more into the cursed cycle of reincarnation.