The Shanghai Garden in Winter: Wintersweet

Take a whiff – it’s the season for fragrant wintersweet (la mei, 蜡梅*), and somewhere in a Shanghai lane or garden, a tree is flowering. They appear in winter’s barren landscape right at that moment when it feels that all hope is lost and spring will never come, its yellow blossoms the promise of spring sunshine.

Song dynasty poets penned odes to the blossoms, and ancient Chinese maidens wore its flowers tucked in their hair. This time of year, branches of wintersweet fill homes with their delicious scent: a sure harbinger of spring. 

A Mass of Colour in the Dead of Winter

 Our favorite Old Shanghai nature writer, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, introduced the wintersweet to his readers in 1939 thus:

“On the subject of shrubs and trees for the garden in winter, it might be well to say more about the winter sweet (Chimonanthus fragrans), a plant which has been in full bloom during the past month or so, and is noted for the fragrance of its odour. Everyone in China must be familiar with this shrub, since branches of it, covered with yellow bloom though bare of leaves, are extensively used by Chinese and Westernerns alike for decorative purposes.

Apart from its delightful smell, it is a very beautiful plant, and when in full bloom shows a mass of colour in the dead of winter at times almost equaling that displayed by a laburnum in spring. There are several species. C. luteus is all yellow, being the commonest form in the Shanghai district, while there is a species, not found here, with large flowers an inch and three-quarters in diameter, of a clear yellow colour, and with leaves twice as large as those of the other species. This is known as C. grandiflora.”

–From “The Garden” column in the China Journal, 1939, by Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Journal founder and author of Nature Notes: A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of a Shanghai Garden.

Scent of Wintersweet

“Cold and cloudy as it is, the sun is growing at the beginning of dawn;

Before the news of spring is announced, the early thin wintersweet blossoms first, with shallow buds and fine pistils;

Evenly fragrant, it is born with casual and elegant bearing,”

– Scent of Wintersweet, Yu Zhi,  Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet

*sometimes written as 腊梅, 腊 referring to the last month of the lunar calendar when the flower blooms.