Page 14 - Растения Сахалинской области в легендах и мифах
P. 14

D





            Diphylleia grayi


            (Diphylleia grayi Fr. Schmidt)







                                                               A beautiful two-leaved Diphylleia plant
                                                            lived in the royal garden among many
                                                            plants. As soon as you looked at the snow-
                                                            white purity of its petals, tenderness and
                                                            love awoke in people's hearts. And so the

                                                            spoiled princess decided to use Diphylleia
                                                            to attract the attention of a prince from a
                                                            neighboring kingdom. She persuaded her
                                                            father to arrange a ball and ordered the
                                                            tailor to sew a dress and decorate it with
                                                            Diphylleia's  white  flowers.  The  gardener
                                                            found out about this and ran to the old
                                                            sorcerer for help. The wizard  knew the

                                                            kind soul of a young gardener and said: "If
                                                            you collect one dewdrop tear from all the
                                                            plants in the garden into a magic vessel and
                                                            sprinkle it on the two-leafed petals, they
             A perennial plant with a strong, furrowed      instantly become invisible."  And he gave
           stem  40–100  cm  high.  There  are  usually     him the vessel. That night the gardener
           two  orbicular-reniform,  thin,  glabrous        collected a full bottle of flower tears and
           above  and  pubescent  below  leaves:  the       sprinkled the snow-white flower. At that very
           lower petiole is 25–30 cm long and 30–35         moment, the petals became transparent,
           cm wide, the upper one is sessile, almost        as if they were made of the finest crystal,
           twice  smaller  in  size.  Flowers  grow  in     and when the tailor  approached them,
           bunch of 8–12, up to 2 cm in diameter, with
           translucent white petals and bright orange       they completely disappeared. The enraged
           stamens, have a light aroma.                     princess threatened to behead the gardener.
             A relict species from Sakhalin Island. In      Fortunately, her father was a prudent man.
           Russia it occurs sporadically in the middle      He went down into the garden and told the
           and  southern  parts  of  Sakhalin  Island       gardeners to show where Diphylleia was
           (environs  of  Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk  and  all       growing. The drops had dried up by that
           administrative districts, except Okhinsky),      time, and the plant glowed with its pristine
           on Moneron Island , as well as in the South      whiteness.  The  king  smiled  at  the  flower
           Kuriles (islands Iturup, Kunashir). Outside      and said: "I hope that my daughter, looking
           the Russian Federation it is widely spread       at you, will find tenderness and kindness in
           in Japan.                                        her heart."




            12
   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19