The Meaning of Plants (9)

昙花一现epiphyllium flowers shortly, It means some stars or great figures only shining in history for a short time, or a flash in the pan. The epiphyllium only flowers at midnight, so someone call it queen of the night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Bb_2yqhVo has put the process in four minutes

At the beginning this story is from Lotus Sutra of Buddhist. It said that there is a flower 昙花it blossom every three thousand years. Later the Chinese used 昙花 to name this flower. We know the Buddhist started from Nepal, yet it spread into China Japan and Thailand while disappeared in Nepal. Today it affected the Chinese culture greatly. Many Chinese word or term is from Buddhist.

铁树开花the iron tree in blossom, it means something (normally good thing) that seldom seen or hardly possible.

In Chinese term the hornbeam is called iron-tree, for the trunk is as hard as iron and it need a fertilizers that with iron content. People believe it will blossom every 60 years.

In fact the hornbeam blossom every year in tropics, but in north of China, with cold weather, it rarely blossom.