A sunny day is perfect for outing, especially as wintersweets exuding a faint, enchanting fragrance are now in full bloom.

Wintersweets at Hangzhou Botanical Garden started to blossom up a few days ago. This is a flower challenging the chilliest days, when all natural spirits are fraying. The golden petals smell of a pleasant smell in winter.

You might wonder about any difference between wintersweet and plum blossoms. Wintersweet, whose name sounds similar to that of the latter, is not actually a type of plum species. It belongs to another family.

Specifically, wintersweets typically flower from December to next March. It has a longer blooming period than that of plum blossoms usually from February to March. The leaves of wintersweet grow opposite to each other, while those of the plum tree alternate. The fruits are quite different, also. The fruit of plum blossoms is what we call “meizi”, or plum, ripening during the “huangmei” (yellow plum) period, whereas the fruit of wintersweet resembles an upside-down bell.

It was a long ago that people started to grow wintersweets. This is a multi-variety flower. According to the Botanical Garden, newly-found wintersweets fall into three categories based on the color differences of inner perianth segments, i.e. the plain-centered, the mottled-centered, and the red-centered. For instance, the plain-centered’s inner perianth is free of the signature purple-red patterns; the mottled- centered’s is partially ornamented with such patterns; and the red-centered is densely covered with those patterns.

Another type of wintersweet blooming now is called mountain wintersweet. It also belongs to the family Calycanthaceae and the genus Chimonanthus, making it a relative of wintersweet. Its flowers look similar to wintersweet’s, but as it is an evergreen plant, the trees are still shrouded with green leaves while blooming. The reflective leaf surface looks slightly rough, just like those of wintersweet.

Mountain wintersweet is also fancifully called “stinky plum” because its brittle leaves, if crushed, will produce a strong smell just like the scent of camphor trees. 

Qianwang Temple is also thronged with visitors, in particular photo shooters flooding to get a nice picture of wintersweet blossoms.

See a wintersweet tree close to the red wall? Its bright yellow petals against the backdrop of the redness signal a striking visual contrast. It has become a destination for ancient-costume addicts, who find this place a perfect mix of the present and the past.

You may get the same view at Xianghu Lake. Wintersweets are also in full bloom everywhere, like the entrance to Xiasun Village, the lakeside opposite to the parking lot of Chengshan Square, and Yueyuan.