In the middle of winter, after the snow, under the neem tree, inadvertently raised my head, the neem that was supposed to be golden yellow became white, and in the background of the clear blue sky, it was milky white and milky, exuding a soft light, and suddenly narrowed the distance between us.
In the twilight of spring, the neem flowers are vividly dismantled, and in the blink of an eye, the purple flowers with the rich smell of creamy cloves have turned into milky white balls, and the branches of the wind chimes sway in the wind, showing their existence to the world in a mature way. If you want to know about the situation of neem flowers, please click below: the blooming to the blossoms is not over, and there is no spring after the neem flowers bloom. No matter how reluctant you are, you have to disassemble a small flower.
More than 20 years ago, when I first saw neem seeds in front of the village committee of a village, I thought that it should have high medicinal value, but it was of little use to myself, and I felt pity to see that they were wasted. At that time, I heard the old people say that this thing is poisonous, and just by hearing the name, I thought it should be extremely bitter, so I just peeled it off and licked it. Now that we've met again after all these years, how can we not take a closer look!
The fruit type of neem is drupe, spherical to oval, slightly larger like jujube, 1-2 cm in diameter, green when unripe, brownish-yellow when ripe, shiny, wrinkled, and with many brown dots. After the baptism of winter snow, as we saw above, some of them turned milky white.
The fruit stalk or its remnants can be seen at one end, and there is a circular pit at the other end, which is the remnant of the flower column. Its exocarp is leathery, loose, and wrinkled, and it can be easily peeled off with a knife that is gently cut. At this time, you can see that the flesh of the fruit - that is, the mesocarp is pale yellow or milky white, looks like a "sand pulp", spongy, and feels facey, but in fact it is sticky when you touch it with your hands.
The flesh has a special smell, mixed with a faint burnt fragrance, only a thin layer, I think this neem is really smart, it is this thin layer with a bitter taste is not very delicious things can allow birds to take them a few kilometers or even dozens of kilometers away, to realize their dream of traveling, to achieve the purpose of expanding the territory and reproducing offspring.
When you go to remove its pulp, you will find that even this thin layer is difficult to clean, and it is very sticky. The best thing to do is to put it in your mouth and chew it gently, sucking constantly. I was prepared for extreme bitterness, but there was a slight sweetness in my mouth, followed by a hint of bitterness, which gradually intensified as the flesh dissolved and the bitterness intensified, but it was still within the tolerable range.
Spit out the pit and wash it, only to see that the pit is oval, tan, and the residual flesh fibers make it look hairy. The pit is very hard and woody, which is a common characteristic of drupes, and if you think about the pit of a peach, you can understand that this is actually its endocarp. There are 5 or 6 longitudinal ridges on the surface of the kernel, which is very artistic.
As with other fruits, I wanted to see what was going on inside the fruit, but the core was so hard that the knife used for dissecting it could no longer do anything, so I had to use a kitchen knife to cut the blade into the inner skin a little bit, and then chop it with the core to cut it horizontally. From the section, there are 4 chambers and 5 chambers in the nucleus, and each chamber has 1 seed, but not all seeds can be fully developed.
The pit is then cut longitudinally, but even a kitchen knife is not enough, and it is difficult to cut it in half. However, who knew that it was easy to solve with pliers, and it was divided into two parts with a light clamp, which was also a coincidence, and the two chambers of the cut surface happened to have seed development in one room, and the other room had no seed development.
Seeing this, I can't help but sigh: with such strict protection, how long does it take for the seeds to germinate smoothly, and how many tribulations do they have to endure!
But it soon turned out that I was a little worried. The day after the fruit was dissected, I searched under a neem tree and found that some of the neem seeds had peeled off under the erosion of wind and frost, and the mesocarp (pulp) had detached, revealing the whitening endocarp (pit), which was cleaner than I had made with my mouth. But this pit once again shows the wisdom of the plant: it turns out that there is a hole in the middle of the pit, and the hole is through from the bottom to the top!
Just like when I dissected a coconut, it proves once again that even hard things have weaknesses. In fact, this is the result of their evolution over thousands of years, an adaptation to the environment, and the wisdom of survival.
Looking at this hole, I suddenly thought: this is not a natural bead, it should be perfect for bracelets!A check on the Internet, it turns out that people have long used to wear bracelets, chains, etc. as toys to play, and the older generation even used them to wear curtains or something, but I am also lonely.
Continue with the dissection. The seeds of the neem tree are flattened and prismatic, purple-red, and the bark is very thin, and it is peeled off with a slight pinch, revealing two hard yellow-white translucent cotyledons, the cotyledons are very loose and easy to separate, and there is a cap-like thing at one end of the two ** leaves, which is easy to fall off, which is the other tissue of the embryo.
Close contact with nature At this point, the fruit and seeds of neem have been dissected, but I always feel that this strange plant will not be so simple, it must have a lot of stories and many uses.
Sure enough, it is not only for us to make bracelets, nor is it just for the birds who are hungry and cold in winter, it is actually a kind of Chinese herbal medicine with strong resistance to fungi, and it also has a good effect on tinea capitis and chilblains. It is recorded in my country's "Lingnan Medicine Collection": "Decoction and washing can treat hand and foot explosion and chilblains." ”
There is an ancient legend: the phoenix is not a sycamore, it is not a practice and does not eat, and it is not a liquor spring, and the "practice" here refers to the fruit of the neem tree, and this neem is still the favorite of the phoenix!