Correspondent /Chu Di Sanxiong
When the author sent his son to study on May 6th, at the Shuikou Mountain in Katian Village, Baimaoping Town, a burst of fragrance greeted his nose, stopped the car to look for the source of the fragrance, and found that the only flower by the stream at a hundred meters away was blooming, and its beauty was incomparable.
When I came to the tree, I found that this cuckoo by the creek was up to 4 meters high, about 40 cm in diameter, covering an area of about 6 square meters; the young branches were slender, the leaves were papery, dark green on the top, light yellowish brown below, the leaf veins were sunken on the top, the bottom was protruding, the buds were conical and ovate, the umbel-shaped inflorescence was born, and there were more than 10 flowers. The peduncle is 1.5 cm long, densely covered with short glandular hairs and flattened long rough fuscous hairs; the calyx lobes are narrowly triangular, 2–5 mm long, covered with pale yellowish-brown short glandular hairs and long rough fuscous hairs; the corolla funnel-shaped, purple-red, 2.3 cm long, the corolla tube is narrowly cylindrical, 1.3 cm long, narrowing towards the base, 2 mm in diameter, glabrous on the outside, the inner surface is slightly soft hairy, the upper part is enlarged, the lobe is 5, the stamens are 5, unequal in length, 2.5-2.8 cm long, protruding from the corolla, the filament base is slightly soft hairs, the anther purple, oblong, 3 mm long, the ovary is ovoid, brown, densely covered with reddish brown bristles.
In May, the white wool flat is filled, and the rhododendron family is basically withered at an altitude of less than 600 meters. But at an altitude of 550 meters, this cuckoo blooms alone with the breeze, smiling proudly and swearing to the people to be solipsistic.
"The cuckoo cries blood, the son returns to mourn"
According to legend, there was a founding king in the ancient Shu kingdom named Du Yu, and the king and his queen were very affectionate, and later the king was assassinated, leaving the queen alone in the palace. Although the king was dead, the king's soul was transformed into a cuckoo bird, wailing at the queen's side every day. The tears shed by the birds were bright red in blood, dyeing the flowers in the garden red, and since then people have called it azaleas. When the queen saw this, she understood that it was the king's soul, and under the extreme sorrow, her body became emaciated and eventually died of depression. After the queen's death, her soul turned into a rhododendron that spread across the mountains, accompanied by the cuckoo bird transformed by the king's soul every day, which is the story of "the cuckoo cries blood, and the son returns to mourn". It is also because of the inseparable love between the king and the queen that was later given by people.