In the long years before chili peppers entered Sichuan cuisine, dogwood played the role of chili peppers, satisfying the spicy Sichuan people's taste for spiciness.

Cortex is a small deciduous tree with small yellow flowers. The fruit is oval, red, sour in taste and can be used as medicine.

Cornus: [zhū yú]

Citation explanation:

Plant name. It has a pungent aroma and can be used as medicine. According to the ancient custom, on the Double Ninth Festival, which falls on September 9th in the lunar calendar, wearing dogwood can dispel evil spirits and ward off evil.

1. Cao Zhi's "Duckweed Chapter" of Wei Dynasty in the Three Kingdoms: "Cornus has its own fragrance, which is not as fragrant as osmanthus and orchid."

2. Volume 3 of "Miscellaneous Notes of Xijing": " On September 9th, wearing dogwood, eating bait, and drinking chrysanthemum wine can make people live longer."

3. Wang Wei's poem "Remembering Shandong Brothers on September 9th" of the Tang Dynasty: "Far away. I know that when my brothers climb high, there will be one less person planted with dogwood."

Extended information:

Morphological characteristics of dogwood:

Deciduous trees or shrubs, 4-10 meters high. ; Bark greyish brown; branchlets slender cylindrical, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; winter buds terminal and axillary, ovate to lanceolate, pubescent. The leaves are opposite, papery, ovate-lanceolate or ovate-elliptical, 5.5-10 cm long and 2.5-4.5 cm wide.

The apex is tapered, the base is broadly wedge-shaped or nearly round, the entire margin, the upper part is green, hairless, the lower part is light green, sparsely white, pubescent, the axillary veins are densely covered with brown tufts, the midrib Protruding, upper part and lower part, nearly hairless, 6-7 pairs of lateral veins, arcuate and inwardly curved; petioles are slender and cylindrical, 0.6-1.2 cm long, with shallow grooves on the upper part and rounded lower part, slightly covered with sparse pubescence.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Cornus officinalis