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THE CHINESE SACRED LILY."
F. A. McCLURE.
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC BOTANY, LINGNAN UNIVERSITY.
This charming flower, which has come to be so closely associated with the Chinese New Year festivities, and bulbs of which have been exported from China to many countries of the world, is generally supposed to have been introduced from the West (1), but recent botanical discoveries1 point to China as its native home. Known to the scientific world as belonging to the species Narcissus tazetta L., of the Amaryllis family this plant is universally spoken of in China as the Water Fairy Flower (IRE)". The poets of this land have, however, bestowed upon it many other fanciful names which reflect their response to the charms of its beauty and its fragrance, and their sense of its almost holy purity. It is little wonder that the Chinese people adore it, for the pure whiteness of its petals and the rich, pervading fragrance shed by its nectaries, come into being almost as if by magic from out of the shaggy brown bulb. And blooming, as it does in southern China at least, at the exact moment of the birth of the lunar year, this flower could not have made a more timely bid for an intimate place in the affections of a people. The method of culture at the time of its flowering period is likewise such as to place it in a class by itself. Only pure water, clean pebbles, warm sunlight and fresh air are required by it. And in the course of four short weeks it brings forth a great cluster of snow-white, fragrant blossoms set off by a background of rich green foliage. The flower- ing is the culmination, however, of three long years of careful nurture. Thus, a sense of the great amount of time and patient labour that have gone into the perfecting of the bulb doubtless enhances the appreciation bestowed upon this flower by poets and all lovers of beauty.
Early in December one is awakened to the approach of the end of the old year by the appearance, on display counters in front of many shops in Canton and Hong Kong, of small heaps of selected Narcissus bulbs in their original, scaly, grey-brown skins, set off by strips of bright red paper on which black characters are inscribed. To one who is familiar with the trade in this choice commodity, this is a sign that men from the obscure source of its production have begun to arrive with their annual consignment of bulbs for the local market. Every year at about this time these agents of the producers come, take up their abode in one or another of the several wholesale houses which regularly have a share in this business, and stay until their several consignments have been sold, not to the wholesale dealers, but to the public. The agent simply makes the wholesale house his tem- porary headquarters while he oversees the selling of his goods. He allows the wholesaler whose premises he uses a fixed percentage of the sale price of the consignment. The lose incurred by allowing perspective buyers to cut open bulbs for inspection is considerable.
The bulbs are sold in wholesale lots, either to men with small retail businesses or to those who force them for the New Year market. Dealers in bamboo and rattan ware usually have an important share in the retailing.
1
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
Vol. III, Nos. 3 and 4.
1.
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Plate 26.
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
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