THE MYSTERY OF THE FLOWERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1050, 14 January 1913, Page 4

THE MYSTERY OF THE FLOWERS.

(By H.F.)

The dusty road curled round the loot of the rich, green hills, and, as if the atmosphere were not already sufficiently heated and the highway dusty enough, a clean, hot sun—its rule unchallenged by the thinnest of clouds peered keenly down and made my journey wearisome, so that I soon tired. I had been told of the picturesque scenery along this road, but I bad yet to come upon it. There was but little to gladden the eye, save a study in greens of varying strength. I sat down by the roadside and saw around me a hundred and one tints of green ; the rich, deep green of the luxuriant crop, next the lighter green denoting a poorer soil, and then as I lifted my glances towards the high lauds I saw that their coats of green became less vivid as the radius of my observation lengthened, until the far-away hills wore a misty blue and looked almost like sand dunes.

By evening I was rearing try destination. Glorious, dense, native bush guarded this portion ol the road, and the air was cool and sweet with a fragrance which only the bush can breathe. The light was growing weaker, and presently bright stars peeped out—cautiously at first—and the sky soon looked busy. When my journey came to an end I found my friend at home alone, smoking bis first evening pipe as he made the last round of his flower beds. He made this little trip amongst his flowers every night with the regularity that you and I nightly wind our watches.

“But you must find it very lonely here,” I observed, alter we had settled in a cosy apartment in my friend’s house. “You forgot that I am old and am what you call something of a philosopher/’ he said. Then, after a brief pause: “And you forget that I have the company of the birds, the trees and the flowers.”

Memories arose of my early attempts to master some of the mysteries of botany. The old man continued: “On the contrary, my young friend, how can I fail to be happy ? There is my garden to interest me solely in a love for the beautiful, if I choose to end my interests there ; around me there lies a much too generous spread for my botanical researches ; and then there is the intelligence of the flowers. “Yes, the intelligence of the flowers, the philosophy of it all! And you think that here I must be lonely 1” He spoke slowly at first, and then laughed as if he were sorry for me, as if he pitied my ignorance of some unusual pleasure that he had found.

The intelligence of the flowers ! To me it sounded strange—a Philistine from the city who sought the spell of country quiettude. Flowers had always claimed me an admirer when they displayed some rare quality of beauty, my botanical interest in flowers has practically been confined to a knowledge <pf the difference between a petal and a sepal (perhaps I could give a satisfactory definition of “corolla” and “pistill,”) but, the intelligence of flowers ! That was beyond me, so I questioned my friend further. “At the outset I have only to quote Maeterlinck,” he said, “who tells us that though there are plants and flowers that are awkward or unlucky, none are wholly devoid of wisdom and ingenuity.” Then my friend began to relate to me enthusiastically the mysteries of the fertilisation of flowers, beginning at the root of the plant, and tracing the growth to the perfect plant. “While you,” he continued, “admire the glory of it and perhaps mourn the fact that in a day or two its whole body .will become tinged with brown, and presently die, I, who know the intelligence of this plant, ask what of its seed ?”

My friend took from his bookshelf a small Maeterlinck volume, and read :

“Every seed that falls at the root of the tree or plant is either lost or doomed to sprout in wretchedness. Hence the immense effort to throw off the yoke

and conquer space. Hence the marvellous systems of dissemination, of propulsion, of navigation of the air, which we find on every side in the forest and the plain

. . . and a thousand other unexpected and astounding pieces of mechanism ; for there is not, so to speak, a single seed but has invented for its sole use a complete method of escaping from the maternal shade.”

“That,” he commented, “is one example of the intelligence of the mother plant, as it were. Then there are plants that provide for the dissemination of their seeds by birds, and again, plants are enabled to open their dry pods to allow the wind to play the part of a distributing factor. Again I go to Maeterlinck :

“ ‘The bird eats the fruit because it is sweet, aud, at the same time, swallows the seed, which is indigestible. He flies away and, soon after, ejects the seed in the same condition in which he has received it, but stripped of its case and ready to sprout far from the attendant dangers of its birthplace.' ” And then the Sage of Flowers told me, with keen regard for exact and minute detail, of the intelligence of a number of different plauls who thus “looked to the future of their young.” You have only to observe the work of some plant, he said, to see how in its flower, seed, and other parts, it displays intelligence. The strenuous fight lor liberty of a cramped plant, the adaption of some species to its surroundings, the intelligence of a root or the branch of a creeper which had encountered unforseen difficulties, and its mastery of the situation ; initiative, industry aud intelligence were everywhere .apparent in plant life as in human life, if one but looked and saw what he saw.

“But the intelligence of plants is not a subject to be crammed into a night,” observed my friend after a while. “Flowers and plants that we tramp heedless under foot perhaps harbour mysteries, deep, thought-compel-ling, aud strange as life itself.” And so we talked on until pipes were finished aud the dying flames of the fire passed the stage where extinguishment was necessary, before leaving for the night, “And yet you think I must be lonely here amongst the birds, the trees, aud the flowers?” was the parting remark of my friend as we turned in. But I no longer thought so.