Among the many flowers, I like cannas very much. The reason goes back to childhood. When I was in junior high school, many cannas were planted beside the campus walls and in the corners of the flower beds. After summer, the green leaves unrolled unintentionally, and trumpet-like flowers bloomed on the tops of the upright flower stems, red as bright as fire, yellow as bright as fire. Delicate and charming. Cluster after cluster, the hotter the weather, the more vigorous the flowers are. There was a male classmate in the class whose father was a teacher at the Agricultural College, and he was very knowledgeable about flowers. Once, this classmate quietly told a few of us a secret. If you pick a canna flower and suck the flower tube with your mouth, you can taste the nectar. . We did the same thing and it was indeed sweet in our mouths. Cannas have been sweet in my heart ever since.
When I was in college, cannas could be seen everywhere on campus. Sometimes I would occasionally pick a flower and taste it, as if I was back to my innocent and naughty boyhood. However, there is more knowledge and thinking during this period, so why is it called "Canna"? In classical poetry, it is often called "red banana". The reason may be that the flowers are mostly red and the leaves look like bananas. When I read the poem by Luo Yin, a poet of the late Tang Dynasty, "The banana leaves bloom in the sky, and the red calyx climbs high to reflect the red sun. It's like a beauty rising from spring sleep, with her crimson lips and green sleeves dancing in the east wind." Like a beauty, Canna seems to be a graceful and graceful beauty in my mind. In fact, after Luo Yin, the name canna gradually replaced red banana.
The flowers, birds, grass and insects in the world are originally ordinary, but once they have beautiful legends and stories, they will become very magical. The same goes for cannas. After working, as my experience expanded, I gradually read various legends about cannas. It is said that on a white and breezy night, a few fairies in the heaven who could not bear the loneliness sneaked out of the palace and wandered around the human landscape. They forgot the rules of heaven and could not return to the heaven, so they turned into graceful cannas. Second, according to Buddhism, canna was formed from the blood that flowed from the toes of Buddha. The demon Devadatta used a big stone to attack the Buddha. Fortunately, the stone had been broken into thousands of small pieces before it rolled down. The Buddha was safe and sound, but one small stone piece still injured his toe, and the blood from the toe was absorbed by the earth. Then bright red cannas grew. Although these two legends are moving, the former is just "beautiful" and the latter is just a teaching of "promoting good and punishing evil".
What fascinates me the most is another legend: Canna is the incarnation of Yu Ji. Chu and Han were fighting each other, and Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, was trapped in Gaixia and surrounded by enemies. The soldiers were shaken and unwilling to fight. In order to encourage Xiang Yu to break out, the young and beautiful wife Yu Ji resolutely drew her sword and committed suicide, interpreting the touching story of "Farewell My Concubine" in history. Xiang Yu was defeated in Wujiang, and he was ashamed to see his elders in Jiangdong. He drew his sword and killed himself. He inserted the golden whip into the ground and grew into a very viable green plant called Overlord Whip, which resembled the majesty and prowess of the Overlord of Chu. After Yu Ji's death, her fragrant soul lingered, and she followed her to the Wujiang River. When she saw her husband's transformed Overlord's Whip, she immediately transformed into a canna. She always kept the Overlord's Whip beside her day and night, accompanying her beloved husband.
Canna is the incarnation of Yu Ji, not only beautiful, but also heroic and fiery passion that moves the heaven and the earth.
I like Canna and appreciate her high character as "a flower as beautiful as a rainbow"!