Heady scent of wintersweet beckons all this season

However, there is an amusing twist to the ancient tradition of winter blossom viewing. Some might have been celebrating an entirely different flower all along. The blossoms they admired were very likely the pink plum flowers that bloom later in early spring, not the waxy yellow wintersweet.

Li Qingwei, a professor at Beijing Forestry University, recently explained in a popular science video that wintersweet and plum blossoms, both called mei in Chinese, bloom around the same time and smell similar, leading flower lovers to group them together.

However, plum blossoms, academically known as Prunus mume, are pink and bloom from March to April. Wintersweet, with its yellow petals, is the true "cold-resistant warrior" of winter and is scientifically named Chimonanthus praecox.

Wintersweet's petals are covered in a waxy "down coat" that can withstand temperatures as low as — 10 C, which is why ancient poets extolled its noble and resilient spirit amid frost and snow.