The Classic of Chinese Flowers

Author: Chen Junyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-03-14
Features: The book includes 188 families, 772 genera, and 2,354 species of flowers, totaling 1.47 million words with over 1,000 illustrations. It is divided into three parts: Introduction, General Discussion, and Specific Accounts.
Introduction, titled "Flowers of China," provides a comprehensive introduction to the historical development and current status of Chinese flowers.
General Discussion covers the basic knowledge of flower cultivation.
Specific Accounts detail the scientific name, common name, synonyms, family and genus, cultivation, brief history of cultivation, origin and distribution, morphological characteristics, species, varieties, and cultivars, growth habits, propagation, cultivation, breeding, related species within the same genus, and applications of various flowers.
There are three appendices: "Chronicle of the Development of Chinese Flower Industry," "Famous Works on Flowers in Chinese History," and "Prominent Chinese Horticulturists." The two books feature flowers such as ornamental plants, ornamental fruit plants, ornamental foliage plants, grasses, vines, etc. The focus is on introducing native Chinese flowers. Wild flowers with ornamental value and potential for development, as well as flowers introduced from abroad that have been domesticated for a long time or are still developing, are also appropriately covered.
The arrangement of flowers in the Specific Accounts of the three books places China's 24 key flowers at the beginning, with the top 10 traditional famous flowers of China marked with an asterisk (). They are then arranged according to the Engler System of Plant Classification (refer to "Illustrated Flora of Higher Plants in China"). Within the same family, plants are arranged in alphabetical order by their Latin names.
The Latin names of species or varieties, or forms, are italicized, while the Latin names of cultivars are in upright type.
The cultivar names of flowers are listed according to the "International Code for the Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants," enclosed in single quotation marks or marked with "CV," with all letters capitalized.