Posted ByChina7dayIn the Northern Song Dynasty, there were different varieties of peony recorded in Luoyang Peony records. In Ouyang Xiu’s “Luoyang Peony record”, there are 24 kinds of peony varieties, 22 volumes, 46 kinds in Zhou Shihou’s “Luoyang Peony record”, and 109 kinds in Luoyang flowers and trees record. Zhou Shihou’s “Luoyang Peony record” contains 46 kinds of 24 kinds mentioned by Ouyang Xiu, and his “Luoyang flowers and trees record” is expanded to 109 kinds on the basis of “Luoyang Peony record”. However, it is a pity that the description of peony varieties in Luoyang huamuji is only the name, but not the description of the characters of each peony variety in Luoyang Peony records. From the two special peony records “Luoyang Peony record”, Ouyang Xiu’s is earlier than Zhou Shihou’s, but when Ouyang Xiu records, Luoyang peony in the Northern Song Dynasty is not only 24 kinds. Ouyang Xiu once recalled visiting Qian Weiyan. On the screen downstairs of Shuanggui, Qian Weiyan said, “if you want to make flowers, this is the name of peony. There are more than 90 kinds.” As for the situation at that time, Ouyang Xiu recalled: “I can’t read it in my spare time, but I have seen more than 30 kinds of things that people call me today, and I don’t know how I can think of my husband and get more of them.” [1] Volume 22 Ouyang Xiu thinks that there are more than 30 kinds of things that people call me “often” and less than 90 kinds of things. And Ouyang Xiu thinks that only those who are famous for their peonies are remembered by Qian, which are not widely known and may not be good, Therefore, the peony described by Qian Weiyan is described by his special author. Qian Weiyan’s records on peony varieties have not been handed down, but this event at least shows that there were more than 24 peony varieties in Luoyang at that time, or even more than 90. With the change of time, there are more and more varieties of peony. About ten years later, Ouyang Xiu sighed in his painting of peonies in Luoyang: “I used to count ten kinds of peonies, but now I forget them for ten and a half years. When you open a picture, you can see the old man’s face, in which several kinds of past are not seen. It’s said that flowers are very special in recent years, and often turn into new branches It took 40 years to change. The variety of Luoyang peony is changing so fast that people may not even recognize it.
In the Tang Dynasty, the names of peony varieties were mostly distinguished by color. This is also in line with the division principle of modern peony varieties. Modern peony can be divided into nine color systems: red, white, yellow, pink, purple, black, blue, green and multi-color. In the Tang Dynasty, no one systematically classified and named the varieties of peony. From the Northern Song Dynasty, the two peony records were classified according to the basic names: “either by surname, or by state, or by land, or by color, or by honoring the differences.” There is a great change in Zhou Shihou’s “Luoyang flowers and trees record” — combining the peony color and flower type to divide the peony varieties into large categories, and then the next small categories. The color can be divided into yellow, red, white, purple, Fei, pink, etc., and the flower type can be divided into three types: thousand leaf, multi leaf and single leaf. This laid a good foundation for the classification of peony in China.