Osmanthus fragrance on the street

By Xinyi Li, EDITOR

The Mid-Autumn Festival is coming, with the air is full of the sweet osmanthus fragrance. It seems like that all osmanthus fragrance is blossoming suddenly. Yellow, orange, and canary are widespread in the city.

Osmanthus fragrans at Hongyadong

At Yangjiaping Zoo, there is a tour group from Germany, visiting the panda hall. “Foreign tourists smelled a sweet scent immediately when they stepped in the zoom. I told them it was the osmanthus fragrans, and only blooms in this season.” Said the tour guide, “They feel sweet and comfortable. They are also interested in Mid-Autumn Festival.”

The tour group from Germany at Yangjiaping Zoo

What the Osmanthus Fragrans Is

Osmanthus fragrans refers “Gui Hua (桂花)” in Chinese. It is usually known as sweet osmanthus, sweet olive, tea olive, and fragrant olive. It is the “city flower” of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Guilin in China. However, this flower can be found in many other cities in China.

Osmanthus fragrans with different colors in canary, yellow, and orange

The flowers bloom on an osmanthus tree, blooming in later summer and autumn every year with a strong fragrance. Their colors are usually yellow, canary, or orange. The fruit is a purple-black drupe with a single hard-shelled seed.

Other Usage of Osmanthus Fragrans

Besides the usage of environment greening, osmanthus fragrance also has many other usages in culinary, medical, and alcoholic in China.

The flowers can be confused with leaves of green or black tea to be the scented tea. The osmanthus tea (桂花茶) ia s strong fragrant to embracing one’s taste buds. Otherwise, osmanthus flowers can be collected to produce the osmanthus-scented jam (桂花酱). People can eat bread with this jam. Filling for dumplings and Tangyuan (a Chinese dessert made from glutinous rice) can be osmanthus flowers.

Osmanthus tea is strong fragrant

In traditional Chinese medicine, the osmanthus leaves are used as an herb tea for the treatment of irregular menstruation.

Osmanthus wine is a Chinses alcoholic drink, and it tastes sweet. It is flavored with sweet osmanthus, produced with week Chinese liquor. The alcoholic content is usually less than 20%.

The osmanthus wine is popular in the public

There is a pastry made of osmanthus is famous in China, naming osmanthus cake (Guihua Gao 桂花糕). It is made of glutinous rice flour, honey sweet-scented osmanthus, and rock sugar. Also, the cake is crystal clear, sweet and soft waxy. Sometimes, the cake has different layers with one layer is opaque while the other layer is slightly translucent.

Osmanthus cake looks beautiful with different layers

Source: CQCB