Candy Candy
It’s hard to say how many people are into wildflowers and other plants, but the number is silently growing. Among them is a blogger going by the handle of Candy Candy, who brings an unmatched passion to the flower hunt. In a period of just over a year, she has posted about a hundred articles describing her treks across the land. To get a look at the albino form of Tricyrtis formosana, she climbed four mountains over three consecutive weeks, ran across all sorts of snakes, and was on the verge of giving up before making the find. To track down the ghostly white Cheilotheca humilis, she took time off work and hiked for three hours in the 5℃ cold of the mountains around the Northern Cross-Island Highway, finally catching up with her quarry in a damp fir grove. To observe Mitrastemon kanehirai, a parasitic plant that has been designated as a national treasure, she made four trips to Mt. Dongyan over a month and a half, hiking ten kilometers each time. Over the four trips, she watched and recorded as the plant sprouted, grew, and flowered. “Once I get fixated on a plant, it’ll be on my mind day and night. I’ll gladly go anywhere and negotiate any obstacle to see it.” Apart from flower hunting, perhaps love is the only thing that can inspire such passion.
All year round, Candy Candy and others like her set their schedules by the life cycles of the flowers. When the object of their attention is set to bloom or bear fruit, they stir to action, and once they find what they’re looking for, they will often burst into tears, not unlike a star-struck fan upon happening across an entertainment idol on the street.
Flower hunting is a new phenomenon that is spreading across Taiwan. For our purposes, let’s call the people who do this “flower chasers.”
National parks, forest recreation areas, and the Society of Wilderness have been training flower chasers for many years, and the people they’ve trained are now spreading the seeds of concern for nature.
Chen Huizhu, a retired teacher of Chinese at Kaohsiung Municipal Cianjhen Senior High School, started out by attending training sessions at Kenting National Park Headquarters, and is now a volunteer guide at Shanlin Xi Forest Recreation Area. Lin Jinsong, who goes by the online handle of Cobra Sow and used to work in the electronics industry, joined the Society of Wilderness and now teaches a community college course where he takes students out to observe nature. “Old Mr. Ku,” a former volunteer guide at Yangmingshan National Park, is extremely knowledgeable about plants, and can answer all sorts of questions concerning trees, flowers, and the like. Meanwhile, a number of Facebook groups and pages with a special focus on plant life have attracted tens of thousands of followers, and even organize periodic nature excursions.
The search for wildflowers and other naturally occurring flora is an antidote to affluenza. Shown here are specimens of Swertia shintenensis (main photo), Lilium speciosum var. gloriosoides (inset, above), and scandent monkshood (inset, right), all highly prized by flower enthusiasts.