Chinese Version
05-31-2021， Monday, Cloudy

I like flowers. I especially like flowers that I can touch and smell pure.

Short herbaceous flowers generally are not easy to reach my horizontal line of sight, so I have very few favorite herbaceous flowers, but I have always thought that the “forget me not” is one of my favorite herbaceous flowers because of its sentimental name. In fact, I just learned about its posture, color, leaves and story in May 2021.

In late May, while walking at a scenic spot in Waltham, MK, my friend, pointed to a cage of short flowers by the side of the road and said: “This flower is special!”

I looked at the flowers and said what my daughter told me once: “There are few blue flowers in nature.”

MK squatted down to take a photo of the flower and said, “The flowers look very sharp.”

I also squatted down and carefully watched the little blue flower: “The color on the edge of the petals is darker than the color on the petals, so the flowers appear to have a sharp outline.” Then I used the PicturetThis app to take a photo of the little blue flowers and shared the name of “Siberian bugloss” with MK.

A few days later, while browsing “my garden” photos in PicturetThis app, I was surprised to see that the Siberian bugloss is also called “forget me not”.

I shared my surprise: “Do you know the other name of the blue flowers you photographed? The name surprised me.”

”No, I don’t know. Now I am more curious, wondering why it surprised you.” (MK)

I responded: ”It is also called ‘forget me not’. I have known the name since my childhood. But I didn’t associate the name with the flower that day which means I didn’t know it well.”

MK did not seem to be so surprised about the new name and said: ”I felt it is reasonable to name the flower ‘forget-me-not’, but unfortunately, I cannot explain why I felt that way.”

Later, MK explained: “Beautiful flowers usually possess kind of female beauty.”

I immediately asked: ”Does this blue flower possess a beauty that is different from female beauty?”

As a sophisticated thinker but naive in flowers, MK tried to be precise: “No, it is very feminine, but I’d say it’s a different type of female beauty, not gorgeous but rather humble. This flower is very small, and it is kind of quiet and not particularly eye-catching.” After a pause, MK continued: “Names of flowers generally have no specific meanings, such as rose and carnation, but ‘forget me not’ has its own meaning，which is impressive. This name is a good match for the small flowers that don’t seem necessarily to be outstanding or even appealing so much at first sight compared with other flowers. I felt like this pretty flower is somehow reminiscent of a shy girl/lady who is humbly asking ‘Don’t forget me’. The man who heard could not forget her forever. It is bittersweet and sentimental.”

After hearing this, I immediately thought about the Hanxiao flower (sweetbay magnolia), a white fragrant flower. Because Hanxiao also has a special meaning in Chinese: wearing a sweet smile with little movement of the lips while hiding ones’ teeth. I have liked the sweetbay magnolia for a long time, since I was with my mother, due to its fragrance, beauty, and name.

Flowers easily please a flower lover. Sharing a loving flower doubles the pleasure.

Little Episodes

1. The Forget me not flowers we took photos of.

2.Why blue flowers are rare in nature
Cite from online:
Blue is a very prominent colour on earth. But when it comes to nature, blue is very rare. Less than 1 in 10 plants have blue flowers and far fewer animals are blue. So why is that?
…
The main reason for this has to do with the physics of light. Pigments appear the colour of the light they don’t absorb, but instead reflect. The most common plant pigment is green chlorophyll, so plants appear green because chlorophyll doesn’t absorb, but rather reflects, green light. Plants however like blue light as it has more energy than any other light in the visible spectrum.

So, if you have blue leaves you are reflecting the highest energy light and relegating yourself to using only poorer quality light that ultimately limits your growth. Not a good strategy which is why most plants avoid it.