Химонант

Botany

The plant is a vigorous deciduous shrub growing to 4 m tall. Its strongly scented pendent flowers appear in winter on bare stems and have 15-21 yellow or pale green-yellow tepals. The inner tepals are usually marked with purplish red pigments. Flower initiation occurs in spring, but the flowers bloom during winter, typically in late December or early January. The petals are quite waxy. The genus name means winter flower in Greek.

Scent

The fragrance of the flowers comes from a combination of volatile terpenoids (monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes) and benzenoids. These volatiles are emitted from nectaries distributed on the adaxial side of the inner petals. Abundant volatiles are present in glycosidically bound forms, such as linalool glucoside. The floral scent attracts and guides pollinators and protects the vulnerable reproductive organs from florivores and pathogens. The chromosome-level genome assembly of wintersweet has a total size of 695.36 Mb.

Uses and culture

In China, Chimonanthus flowers at the Chinese New Year, when flowering sprigs are used as hair ornaments. The flowers are also used in floristry as cut flowering branches. The flowers are said to be edible and can be used to flavor tea. Wintersweet is also used medicinally, primarily for the treatment of coughs, rheumatism, and measles. The plant is also grown in Iran, where it is called gol-e yakh, and is a common motif in traditional Persian poetry, literature, and music. The hydrodistilled leaf oils of this species and of Chimonanthus zhejiangensis showed antifungal activity against eight phytopathogenic fungi, with MIC values of 8-32 μg/mL.

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