Banksia

 

Through the front door arrive scarlet banksias wrapped in brown paper, with small brown matching card attached by brown string. They are something. Their hardy make-up – petals are not quite the word – say Western Australia, the immense other half of the continent that we wish our ancestors had had the imagination to call something more imaginative. Perhaps when they secede from the Commonwealth they will think up a better name. Scarlet banksias, in fact, though it’s doubtful Sir Joseph Banks ever clapped eyes on them, or eyeglass. Albany banksia is another name, which circles the mental map of their sole provenance, hanging freely in the air over that southwest bulge of the continent. They are something else. Acutely turned red wires flank their cones, the circuitry of space age power boxes. Their space age dates from arrival by wind or ocean or good old evolution, in the days when the only glass came out of volcanoes. Our own space age provides some of this detail via muse mouse and results-check keyboard. They are heavy, the flower heads are so heavy, yet they do not droop like a Victorian lachrymose slow drip poem but balance beautifully on woody stems, tougher than any onshore gale. The ancients would have memorised these poems year by year, passing down the fine detail of follicle and foliage, innocent of plagiarism. The muse mouse claims the local Noongar call the species Waddib, it’s all one word at a time. Nectar is drawn from the flowers’ inners. Honeyeaters give the containers a good shake. Cockatoos scrunch the targets. Wild bees in the wild helter-skelter wibble wobble through the rungs and q-tips. Though inside here now the brown paper is untied and unwrapped, the scarlet banksias lifted out carefully in what florists and horticulturalists cannot resist calling a wow moment. Perhaps a moment will come in the future when nature will not be converted into product sold for its wow moment, however that’s the way it is meantime. The spiral steps of rough-hewn leaves ascend at subtle intervals towards the power boxes, lower reaches thoughtfully scraped off near the base for positioning in a glass vase. Moving on from the wow moment, the arrangement is wiggled into position for maximum effect. Fire is a permanent reminder with these Waddib branches, without which it’s likely they would not exist. Their leaves are green flames that feed the naked flames above. In their circling habitat fire will again force their seeds into the open , blown or washed down into any place that gives them life and keeps them abundant. They are like nothing else. An eyeful, placed near a sunny window, they cheer the recipients through some difficult days, memory being what it is.