This is a vanilla plant that has plagued Lao Xia for decades. Weeds from south to north can be found, and no match can be found for many years.
Around midsummer, when you are walking in the wilderness, or on the deserted roadside, at noon when the sun is the fiercest, suddenly a faint fragrance will float around you, sweet, similar to the smell of musk and fragrant beans, or like the legendary "fragrance" in the book. It smells good, and it's beautifully described in words.
This is a very magical fragrance that is often encountered. It's only when the sun is fierce at noon that you are caught off guard. It will pass after a pause, and then you can't find the source. There are all kinds of grass everywhere.
Countless times, from the old summer when I was a child, I strongly wanted to find out what kind of plant it was, and even wanted to pull out all the weeds nearby one by one by elimination.
It should be said that in my memory, I finally locked that fragrance on several plants, but the puzzle has never been answered, because once those locked plants smell it alone at close range, most of them will only have a prominent grass smell.
After living in Xinjiang for more than 20 years, I have spent more time in nature, and this encounter with faint fragrance has become more and more frequent, and my childhood interest in exploration has also been unprecedentedly high.
Walking on a road full of weeds at noon, I suddenly felt the fragrance of deja vu floating across the street, and quickly stopped, wandering repeatedly within ten meters before and after, squinting at the cat, hoping to find some clues.
But the results are mostly disappointing.
Finally, osmanthus fragrans, a leguminous plant with clusters of yellow flowers called "horse alfalfa" by local herders, was locked, and its roots, leaves and flowers were collected and identified one by one.
To tell the truth, its roots, like all leguminous plants, only smell of mixed soil and plants;
Its stems are as fragrant as other succulent herbs, that is, the smell of grass;
The answer is in its leaves. It really smells like a faint dream, but it is best not to take a deep breath and smell hard when the sun is strong. It's wonderful to smell the grass hard;
Yellow flowers are a mixture of pollen and leaves, and the fineness is too high to distinguish. ...
Lao Xia's nose is a godsend pride. I can distinguish subtle differences in smells, especially the smell of plants.
Twenty years ago, I studied lavender and essential oil, and made blind comments on more than a dozen different varieties of lavender. I can hardly make mistakes. I can clearly print out a special ingredient or nuance in them in my mind.
But among all the plants, this osmanthus really bothered Lao Xia's nose for many years.
Melilotus flavescens will release a fragrance that has been purified and optimized many times with the degree of sunlight exposure, more like a person suddenly burping and suddenly releasing it. An accidental time, an unprepared encounter, it appeared, waited, searched carefully, and disappeared again.
It's like playing a joke on purpose, playing a prank. At this moment, it suddenly stood quietly and seriously, looking at Lao Xia solemnly, looking at me blankly, puzzled and curious. ...
Later, Lao Xia chatted with several friends in the international fragrance industry (by the way, the "sweet clover" mentioned in "Xiang" is not this sweet clover, but osmanthus, which is completely different), and some of them suffered the same thing as me. ...
A lot of discussion, a lot of physical evidence, a lot of data inspection and research, we all attributed the faint fragrance to the ugly leguminous plant sweet clover.
Sure enough, nature is the best perfumer!
It will magically make the compound incense full of life energy and body temperature, and then release it quietly at some time.
Nature's perfume is always the strongest and most exquisite, and its expression is always the most changeable and unpredictable. No wonder our generation can only imitate the appearance of the subject and the cottage forever, and it is difficult to really touch the soul!
1820, a scientist named Vogel extracted "vanilla extract" from a sweet clover in Guyana, and discovered the fragrance "coumarin" for the first time.
Up to now, there are more than 1000 kinds of coumarin family and its derivatives, which are widely used in biomedicine, cosmetics, food, health care products, polymer science and dyes.
Especially in medicine, sweet clover, as a herb, has been used as a liver conditioning drug and is considered to have the effect of eliminating edema.
Coumarin, as a plant monomer extract, is also used as a blood thinner, which has a certain therapeutic effect on some tumors and also has an antifungal effect.
Modern science and technology have always regarded the understanding and revelation of nature as a sign of progress, and the success of separating a monomer from natural products as a "scientific and technological progress award". Once a monomer is verified, it will be doubly rewarded. As a direct result of this effort, we have broken many components and activities that were originally rich, diverse and balanced, and the purity of monomer purified products is getting higher and higher, but it is getting farther and farther away from the true colors of nature!
However, over-amplifying the single function and abusing it, on the other hand, do harm to human health (science is a double-edged sword)!
No, because of the "potential adverse reaction" of monomer coumarin, the United States banned the addition of coumarin extracted from coumarin in food on 20 1 1! ! !
Looking at many inventions of modern human science and technology, it is basically this law: first, a monomer is found in natural products, then it is called all mankind, and then it is proved to be applauded by experiments, and then the industry of monomer purification develops on a large scale, and then it is used in various fields of medicine, food, health care products and cosmetics, and then it is found to be "hepatotoxic" or "neurotoxic", and then it is restricted or even banned by legislation. ...
Ancient oriental philosophy emphasizes the balance between good and evil, the balance between yin and yang, and the balance between various factors and energy. It is believed that any excessive strengthening of a certain factor or force (such as "monomer" in modern science) will inevitably bring new damage. ...
There are more and more strange circle laws in scientific understanding: affirmation-negation-negation affirmation. Perhaps re-examining the balance, balance and balanced thoughts in eastern philosophy can get new inspiration!
This sweet clover in mid-June, this sweet clover lingering in the old summer, made the old summer pour out these many words all morning, perhaps just like this plant: it was brewed for too long and just happened to meet the sun and temperature, so it was released!
As for the wilderness, it may not matter whether you happen to pass by or never pass by.
—— Institute of Natural Life of Laoxia Handicraft Industry Society 20 18.6. 15