周敦頤
Of the flowers in the Chinese garden, the most appreciated were the orchid, peony, and lotus ("Nelumbo nucifera"). During the Tang dynasty, the peony, the symbol of opulence and a flower with a delicate fragrance, was the most celebrated flower in the garden. The poet Zhou Dunyi wrote a famous elegy to the lotus, comparing it to a "junzi", a man who possessed integrity and balance. The orchid was the symbol of nobility, and of impossible love, as in the Chinese expression "a faraway orchid in a lonely valley." The lotus was admired for its purity, and its efforts to reach out of the water to flower in the air made it a symbol of the search for knowledge. The chrysanthemum was elegized the poet Tao Yuanming, who surrounded his hermit's hut with the flower, and wrote a famous verse: