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Arts & Communication Design application of foliage plants

2. Overview of foliage plants Table 1. Color classification of foliage plants 1

2.1. Definition of foliage plants Color properties Common plants Color
extraction
Foliage plants refer to the plants that attract viewers mainly
through their vibrant leaf colors or unusual leaf shapes. Green leaves
They have a longer display season compared to general
plants and include all types of trees, shrubs, and grasses.

They can fulfill people’s indoor and outdoor plant needs Conifers Plantain
and are often used in gardening and landscaping. Broadly
speaking, foliage plants include cacti, bamboo, agaves,
palms, pines, cypresses, asparagus, and ferns. 2

2.2. Ornamental features of foliage plants
Bamboo Lotus leaf
2.2.1. Leaf color
Colored leaves
The human eye is more sensitive to color, so the most
intuitive observation of foliage plants is color viewing. As
shown in Table 1, leaves can be divided into green leaves
and colored leaves according to their color properties. Photinia Zelkova
Green-leaved plants most commonly depicted by the
ancients are pine, bamboo, banana, and lotus, and their
depictions are usually associated with the character and
sentiment of the garden owner. For instance, the writer
Zhang Yu, who lived at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, Willow Chinese pistache
used the phrase “dark green and beautiful jade” to describe
the sight of the bamboo in the snow and sunshine in A
Memoir of the Deep Bamboo Pavilion. 3

Colored foliage plants can be categorized into spring- Maple Sebiferum
colored leaf plants, autumn-colored leaf plants, and winter-
colored leaf plants based on their seasonal characteristics.
4
Most of the common-colored foliage plants are spring-
colored foliage plants and autumn-colored foliage plants.
Willows are typical of spring-colored foliage plants, as Ginkgo Common Smoketree
Bai Juyi wrote in the “Song of Willow Branch:” “A tree of
million branches sways in breeze of spring; More tender,
softer than golden silk string by string.” Autumn-colored traditional Chinese gardens, emphasizing the slender and
5
foliage plants have attracted attention since ancient times elegant bamboo leaves as well as the serene and beautifully
due to their slow rates of color change, such as red maple, refined artistic conception. However, the ancients were
ginkgo, yellow bilberry, Zelkova, sebiferum, and common more concerned with the overall beauty of the leaves and
smoke tree. Maple viewing is an activity that has a long the importance of personification. In addition to a few
history in China, as described in the poem “Song of a Pipa representative plants, there are few records on the details
Player” by Bai Juyi: “One night by riverside I bade a friend of the leaf shape of other plants.
goodbye; In maple leaves and rushes autumn seemed to
sigh.” 6 2.2.3. Leaf sound
Appreciating the distinctive sound that leaves make
2.2.2. Leaf shape
when exposed to weather conditions such as rain or
From a biological point of view, the leaf shape of foliage wind is an essential component of leaf-watching. Bai Juyi
plants is roughly oval, heart-shaped, palm-shaped, fan- wrote in “Night Rain:” “I know the night rain through
shaped, rhombus, ovate, round, triangular, and so on. the window, but the sound of the plantain comes first,”
7
Table 2 illustrate the classification of leaf shapes.
From the perspective of plant culture, “moving bamboo 1 Photo reference: https://image.baidu.com/ [Last accessed:
as a window” is an important landscape technique in 18 October 2023]

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1854