Page 16 - Растения Сахалинской области в легендах и мифах

G Gastrodia elata

Perennial plant up to 1 m tall. The stem is (Gastrodia elata Blume)
straight, thick, leafless, glabrous, brownish.
Inflorescence is a multiflowered loose
raceme up to 25 cm long, with yellowish-
brownish flowers on thinlegged flowers up
to 2.5 cm long. Perianth leaves up to 1 cm
long. The lip is up to 7 mm long, oblong-
oval, whitish, threelobed.
Reaches the northeastern border of the
range. Known from a few locations on
Sakhalin Island (Nevelsky District, Krilyon
Peninsula) and the southern Kuril Islands:
Iturup and Kunashir. It is also distributed
in the south of the Khabarovsk Territory
and in the Primorsky Territory, outside the
Russian Federation it is found in China, on
the Korean Peninsula and in Japan, where
the main part of the range is located.

A long time ago there was a monk. He decided to outwit Death itself
and outlive everyone in the world. He found out where the gloomy abode

of Death is, and waited for her to go to the next harvest of lives. He
slipped into her dwelling, looked around and saw a bottle filled with light
in a stone niche. The monk understood that this is the elixir of eternal
life. The sly man was delighted, took out a jug from his bosom and poured
a little into it. Since then, illnesses have receded from him — he lived
without adversities. But one day the elixir ran out. So the monk went to

the house of Death for the second time, and again he managed to take
out the precious drink from there. But Death noticed that the bottle began
to empty, and decided to hunt down the thief. When for the third time the
monk made his way into the gloomy dwelling, Death attacked him. The
monk started running as fast as he could, splashing the elixir. When he
finally ran back home, it turned out that there was nothing left in the jug.
And a wonderful plant grew where the drops of the elixir fell, and the

flower absorbed the power of the drink of immortality.

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