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The Fancun Jupu 范村菊譜 is a book on chrysanthemums written by the Song period 宋 (960-1279) scholar Fan Chengda 范成大. There are two other books with the title of Jupu, one by Liu Meng 劉蒙 and one by Shi Zhengzhi 史正志, so that it is important to add the augment Fancun 范村 "from the village of the Fan family" in order to avoid confusion. Fan Chengda's Jupu was finished in 1174 and mainly describes the flowers that the author grew in his own garden. The book begins with the statement that chrysanthemums were the most pure flowers that could be used as a medicine, so that it was highly estimated through all ages. There are more than 70 kinds of chrysanthemum flowes, of which Fan Chengda himself grew 36 kinds. He presents a list of these different kinds, in sequential order of the flower's rated quality, beginning with the yellow kinds, proceeding to the white, and ending with coloured kinds. Among the yellow kinds, the tengjinhuang 勝金黃 was rated the best, among the white the species wuyueju 五月菊, and among the coloured types the kind fodingju 佛頂菊. For all these kinds of chrysanthemums, Fan Chengda provided an exact description of the appearance of the flowers. The book ends with an historical overview of chrysanthemum cultivation and its use as medicine.
The Fancun Jupu is included in the reprint series Baichuan xuehai 百川學海, Shuofu 說郛 and Siku quanshu 四庫全書.
Source: Li Xueqin 李學勤, Lü Wenyu 呂文鬰 (1996). Siku da cidian 四庫大辭典, vol. 2, p. 1865. Changchun: Jilin daxue chubanshe.
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