The poetry of earth: Return of the flowers
By Edith Coleman
The poetry of the earth is never still. The metre may vary, but the poem sings throughout the changing seasons. Perhaps the road has seemed somewhat heavy this winter, yet there were always happy bends around which we spied the beckoning finger of Spring.
Of all the flowers that fill the gay pageant of spring, the modest wild orchids hold first place in the hearts of many lovers of nature. Although generally of smaller size, the Australian species are the equal of the ground orchids of other parts of the world. The smallest and least conspicuous of them is unrivalled in the delicacy of colouring and perfection of line. Botanists of other countries are envious of the Commonwealth’s orchid wealth.
September brings some of our quaintest forms – the elves and fays of the forest world, the whimsical members of the wildflower realm. With warm sunny days the rush begins, and the student of these wildflower aristocrats is somewhat exercised to keep apace with their crowded hour. These shy, wild orchids are essentially flowers of uncultivated lands, and those who have fallen under the spell of their beauty, who have, perhaps, grown up among them, say that they can make a friendly place of some remote wilderness. They are there for all. One needs no expensive glasshouse. Nature is our universal gardener, and she draws no wages. All one needs is the desire to know them and a love for bush rambles. One need be no great walker, nor need one travel far, for many species grow in easily accessible places. If our wild orchids are fast disappearing in settled areas, we may cheer ourselves with the assurance that they are claiming new territory in the lightly timbered virgin country, where a sufficient fall of leaves provides the humus they love.
In fancy let us enlist the service of a magic carpet and seek a few of the 101 things that tell so happy a sum of spring joy. It need bear us no farther than Bayswater. It must set us down on a path which leads into a sea of slender bluebells; where tall blue pincushions grow luxuriously, intermingled with shell-grass and lady’s hair, ‘quivering sweet to the touch.’
We shall wade through luscious flowering grasses that glint magically when breezes stir their burnished blades. Patches of wild iris make purple lakes in long, level stretches of russet grasses, and nodding blue lilies spread wide their petals, offering their very hearts in exchange for our admiration. But for only a few brief, sunny hours are we permitted to enjoy the gleaming golden stamens; then once more they are closely cradled in the folds of blue to protect them for their great work in the world.
The air is laden with sweet briar scent, and is almost heavy with the warm vanilla fragrance of chocolate lilies. Can you smell them? Over all peep inquisitively those wildflower gossips, the tall white grass-tree flowers. We have the chance of finding a round half-dozen species of the queens of all forest flowers, the modest wild orchids. There are spiders, brownbeards, pink-fingers, double tails, and greenhoods by the score. The quaint bearded green-hood alone is worth coming to see. Most people who know the wild orchids at all are familiar with the brownbeard – Father Christmas many children call it – with its labellum fringed with long, silky hairs, curiously like a beard. But the bearded greenhood, although abundant in its favourite habitats, is not so well known. Its long, thread-like labellum is adorned with yellow, sometimes green, hairs, and it resembles a centipede with its numerous legs.
Not far away we find the misty purple flowers of the scented brownbeaks in their favourite tangles of tall tussock grass. In an especially favoured spot there are hosts of buttercups, billy-buttons, fringed lilies, golden everlastings, and myriads of tall, pink triggers. Farther over we wander about low-lying grass flats, on which every little weed-grown pool is a garden in itself, blue as the sky it reflects or the glinting wings of the great dragon-flies that dart and dip, dealing death, mercifully so swiftly, to the hapless victims in its depths. We follow the exquisite scent with which Nature has compensated the sweet-leeks, the Cinderellas of the orchid family, for their modest apparel and their topsy-turvy habit of growth. Or, if we wish, our carpet shall take us toward the coast, where the wedding-bush will soon be a dream of soft, creamy loveliness. The tea-tree already wears its spring mantle, and the heavily laden bees scatter storms of snowy petals as they browse among the starry flowers. On the sandy heathlands, amid correa and pinkeye, we find the redbeak orchids, their flowers a little suggestive, perhaps, of pink and white peppermints. The well-known popular name, ‘flower-of-sadness,’ seems most appropriate when one sees pressed specimens lying on a sheet of white paper, for the plant turns coal-black when it is dry. Here we find some of the fantastic, even grotesque, members of this queenly family, whose weird shapes invite a smile. ‘Mosquitoes’ and ‘gnats’ fraternise with helmet-orchids and pink-fairies. Birds and orchids are never far apart. One stops to look at one and to listen to the other.
Must we reluctantly turn our carpet toward town and the trials that await us there? Happily our working days are short, and we can easily count the hours that lie between this and our next happy jaunt into Nature’s wildflower realm. Those of us on whom the gods have bestowed the gift of imagination may sail away on our carpet when we will, to watch the return of the flowers in the yearly resurrection of spring.
Chapter 11
THE MOST INTERESTING RAGE ON EARTH
‘The natives at Hermannsburg brought in many food plants for my collection . . . I came to regard these happy people as comrades, “cobbers” shall we say, for they shared
