The Meaning of Plants (1)

Being an agricultural country, Chinese scholar always love to observe plants and study their meanings. But these so called meanings are not scientific one. It is said that a famous scholar 王阳明 (1472 Oct 31－1529 Jan 9 AD. who was a general also; in ancient China, most high level generals were also scholars) had stood in front of bamboo for seven days trying to find out the reason of it, but he failed for lacking a scientific environmental and he fell ill finally.

Now here are some examples about the meaning of plants.

荷花 water lily: born from mud, but never being stained. It means a good person even born in a nasty environmental his behave would be still decent. The story was from a scholar of Song Dynasty named周敦頤 (1017－1073July 24 AD) he said:
　　水陸草木之花，可愛者甚蕃。晉陶淵明獨愛菊；自李唐來，世人盛愛牡丹；予獨愛蓮之出淤泥而不染，濯清漣而不妖，中通外直，不蔓不枝，香遠益清，亭亭靜植，可遠觀而不可褻玩焉。予謂菊，花之隱逸者也；牡丹，花之富貴者也；蓮，花之君子者也。噫！菊之愛，陶后鮮有聞；蓮之愛，同予者何人；牡丹之愛，宜乎眾矣。

Among river, lake and dry land, there are so many flowers, most of them are lovely; 陶淵明 love chrysanthemum only. From Tang Dynasty, people love peony; I love the water lily, for it is born from mud, but never being stained, it was washed by pure water and nothing to do with seductive. It has empty heart (metaphor for modesty) and straight stems (metaphor for straightforward), neither spreading about nor branching out-concise (metaphor for not a trouble maker), light but spreading wider fragrant, it stay there steady and quiet, people can observe it from distant but not bother it closely. I think chrysanthemum is the hermit, peony is the noble, yet water lily is the decent. Ha, 陶淵明love chrysanthemum, people like me love water lily and most people love peony.