FRUITS AND SCENTS
"The pot herbs of the gods."--THOREAU.
Those branches of the cultural enterprise which depend upon my own
unaided exertions fail, I am bound to confess, consistently. However
partial to the results of the gardener's art, I admit with lamentations
lack of the gardener's touch. Since bereft of black labour by the
seductions of rum and opium, the plantation of orange-trees has sadly
degenerated; the little grove of bananas has been choked with gross
over-bearing weeds, the sweet-potato patch has been absorbed, the
coffee-trees elbowed out of existence. But how may one man of many
avocations withstand acres of riotous and exulting weeds? Therefore do I
attempt atonement for obvious neglect by the scarcely less laborious
delight of acclimatising plants from distant tropical countries.
A valued and disinterested friend sends seeds which I plant for the
benefit of posterity. Who will eat of the fruit of the one durian which I
have nurtured so carefully and fostered so fondly? Packed in granulated
charcoal as an anti-ferment, the seed with several others which failed
came from steamy Singapore, and over all the stages of germination I
brooded with wonder and astonishment. Since the durian is endemic in a
very restricted portion of the globe, and since those who have watched the
vital process may be comparatively few in number and therefore unlikely
to be jaded by the truisms of these pages, a few words in explanation may
not be resented. The seed of the durian is roughly cordate, about an inch
and a quarter long. In the form of a disproportionately stout and
blundering worm the sprout of my seed issued from the soil, peered vaguely
into daylight, groped hesitatingly and arched over to bury its apex in the
soil, and from this point the delicately white primal leaves sprang, and
the growth has been continuous though painfully slow ever since.
Perhaps the deliberate development of the plant is gauged by eagerness
and anticipation. Do I not occasionally indulge the hope of living long
enough to sample the first fruits? When in such humour I long for the
years to come, and thus does my good friend stimulate expectations:--
"I have been spending a small fortune in durians, they are relatively
cheap and very good this season in Singapore. Like all the good things
in Nature--tempests, breakers, sunsets, &c. durian is indescribable.
It is meat and drink and an unrivalled delicacy besides, and you may gorge
to repletion and never have cause for penitence. It is the one case where
Nature has tried her hand at the culinary art and beaten all the CORDON
BLEUE out of heaven and earth. Would to Heaven she had been more lavish
of her essays!
"Though all durians are, perhaps, much alike and not divided like apples
and mangoes into varieties, the flavour varies much according to size and
ripeness. In some the taste of the custard surrounding the heart-like
seeds rises almost to the height of passion, rapture, or mild delirium.
Yesterday (21st June, 1907) about 2 p.m. I devoured the contents of a
fruit weighing over 10 lb. At 6 p.m. I was too sleepy to eat anything,
and thence had twelve hours of almost unbroken slumber."
Since my friend is not an enthusiast in regard to tropical fruits, his
reverie is all the more reasonable.
The Dyaks, who are passionately fond of the durian, distinguished it by
the title of DIEN, which signifies the fruit PAR EXCELLENCE. Under such
circumstances my anticipations are justifiable. To my friend I am also
indebted for several young plants of the sapodilla plum (ACHRAS SAPOTA),
sold in some parts of India under the spurious title of MANGOSTEEN, and
considered to be one of the most luscious fruits of the tropics. Like the
durian, the sapodilla plum grows all too slowly for my precipitate
tastes, though I console myself plenteously with mangoes.
Now, the mango in its infinite variety possesses charms as engaging as
those of Cleopatra. Rash and vain though it be, I am in such holiday
humour in respect of the sweet anticipation of the durian that I cannot
refrain from an attempt to chant the praises of the "little lower"
fruit. Yet it is
"Beyond the power of language to enfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart"
whose palate is tickled with such dulcet, such fantastic flavours.
How may one hope to externalise with astringent ink the aesthetic
sensation of the assimilation of gusts of perfume?
A mango might be designated the unspeakable eatable, for who is qualified
to determine the evanescent savours and flavours which a prime specimen
of the superb fruit so generously yields? Take of a pear all that is
mellow, of a peach all that is luscious, of a strawberry all that is
fragrant, of a plum all that is kindly, of an apricot all its aroma, of
cream all its smoothness. Commingle with musk and honey, coriander and
aniseed, smother with the scent of musk roses, blend with cider, and the
mixture may convey a dim sense of some of the delectable qualities of one
kind of mango. To do justice to the produce of the very next tree another
list of triumphant excellences might be necessary. A first-class mango is
compact of so many sensations to the palate, its theme embraces such rare
and delicate surprises, that the true artist in fruit-flavours is fain to
indulge in paraphrase and paradox when he attempts to record its virtues
and--yes, its vanities.
There are mangoes and mangoes. The very worst is not to be wholly
despised. For the best there are due moods and correct environments. For
some, the lofty banquet-hall, splendid with reflected lights and the
flash of crystal and silver and the triumphal strains of a full band
hidden by a screen of palms and tree-ferns. There are others best to be
eaten to slow, soft music in a flower-bedizened glade of fairy-land.
September is the season of scents. Partly as a result of the dryness of
the month, the mango trees continue to bloom as though each had
determined (for the time being) to abandon all notion of utility and to
devote itself solely to the keeping up of appearances. Appearances
are well worth maintaining, for however trivial from a florist's point
of view the flower of the mango in detail, yet when for six weeks on end
the trees present uniform masses of buff and pink, varied with shades
of grey and pale green, and with the glister of wine-tinted, ribbon-like
leaves, and the air is alert with rich and spicy odour, there is ample
apology ever ready for the season and the direct results thereof. The
trees are manifestly over-exerting themselves, in a witless competition
with others which may never boast of painted, scented fruit. There is
not a sufficient audience of aesthetics to tolerate the change of which
the mango seems ambitious.
In Japan, where the cultured crunch hard and gritty fruits, peach and
plum trees may be encouraged to expend all their force and prime in the
production of bloom. Vagrant Englishmen are still so benighted that the
desire for sweet and aromatic fruit vaunts over that which gives delight
merely to the eye. But to assume indifference to present conditions, to
decline to accept in full measure the redolence of the season which
stands for spring in tropical Australia, to refuse to be grateful for it
all, would be inhuman.
The limes have flowered and scattered their petals; the pomeloes (the
forbidden fruit) display posies of the purest white and of the richest
odour, an odour which in its depth and drowsy essence epitomises the
luxurious indolence of the tropics; the lemons and oranges are adding to
the swectness and whiteness, and yet the sum of the scent of all these
trees of art and cultivation is poor and insipid compared with the results
of two or three indigenous plants that seem to shrink from flaunting their
graces while casting sweetness on the desolate air.
Just now, in some situations, the old gold orchid rivals the mango in
showiness and fragrance; the pencil orchid dangles white aigrettes from
the trunks and branches of hundreds of trees, saturating the air with a
subtle essence as of almonds and honey; and the hoya hangs festoons from
rocks and trees in such lavish disregard of space and the breathings of
less virile vegetation, that the sensual scent borders on the excessive.
On the hill-tops, among rocks gigantic of mould and fantastic of shape,
a less known orchid with inconspicuous flowers yields a perfume
reminiscent of the violet; the shady places on the flats are showy with
giant crinum lilies.
It is the season of scents, and the native, untended, unpampered plants
are easily and gracefully first in an uncatalogued competition. Haunting
conceit on the part of the mango will not permit acknowledgment of
defeat; but no impartial judge would hesitate in making his selection
from among plants which in maturing make no formal appeal whatever to
man, but in some cases keep aloof from notice and renown, while
dissipating scents which fertilise the brain, stimulating the flowers of
fancy. Not all the scents which sweeten the air are salubrious. Several
are distinctly injurious. Men do not actually "die of a rose in aromatic
pain," though many may become uncomfortable and fidgety by sniffing
delicious wattle-blossom; and one of the crinum lilies owes its specific
title, (PESTILENTIS) to the ill effects of its stainless flowers, those
who camp in places where the plant is plentiful being apt to be seized
with violent sickness. An attractive fruit with an exalted title
(DIOSPYROS HEBECAPRA) scalds the lips and tongue with caustic-like
severity, and a whiff from a certain species of putrescent fungus produces
almost instantaneous giddiness, mental anguish, and temporary paralysis.
The most elemental of all incenses--that which arises from warm, dry soil
sprinkled by a sudden shower--is undoubtedly invigorating. The spirituous
scent of melaleuca-trees burdens the air, not as an exhalation but as an
arrogant physical part of the Isle, while a wattle (ACACIA CUNNINGHAMI)
shyly proclaims its flowering by a scent as intangible and fleeting as a
phantom.
"The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense." Not so in
respect of the organ of smell. The more educated, the more practised nose
detects the subtler odour and is the more offended by grossness. And upon
what flower has been bestowed the most captivating of perfumes? Not the
rose, or the violet, or the hyacinth, or any of the lilies or stephanotis
or boronia. The land of forbidding smells produces it; it is known to
Europeans as the Chinese magnolia. Quaint and as if carved skilfully in
ivory, after the manner of, the inhabitants of its countrymen, the petals
tumble apart at the touch, while fragrance issues not in whiffs but in
sallies, saturating the atmosphere with the bouquet of rare old port
commingled with the aroma of ripe pears and the scent of musk roses.
Some of the flowering plants of old England here dwell contentedly,
leafage being free, however few and dwarfed in some cases the bloom.
Roses, violets, honeysuckle, pansies, cosmos, phlox, balsams, sunflowers,
zinnias, blue Michaelmas daisies, dianthus, nasturtiums, &c., are on
common ground with purely tropical plants, while ageratum has become a
pestiferous weed.
An early or late arrival among flowers and fruit cannot be hailed or
chidden where there is but trifling seasonable variation. Without
beginning and without end, the perpetual motion of tropical vegetation is
but slightly influenced by the weather. Who is to say that this plant is
early or that late, when early or late, like Kipling's east and west,
are one? It is not that all flowering trees and plants are of continuous
growth. Many do have their appointed seasons, producing flowers and fruit
according to date and in orderly progress, leaving to other species the
duty of maintaining a consecutive, unbroken series which defies the
mechanism of cold countries with their cast-iron calendars.
Here but three or four trees deign to recognise the cool season by the
shedding of their leaves. FICUS CUNNINGHAMI discards--by no means
consistently--its foliage in obedience to some spasmodic impulse, when the
many thin branches, thick-strewn with pink fruit, stand out against the
sky as aerial coral, fantastically dyed. But in two or three days
burnished brown leaves burst from the embraces of elongated buds which,
rejected, fall--pink phylacteries--to decorate the sand, while in
a week the tree wears a new and glistening garment of green. The
flame-tree (ERYTHRINA INDICA) slowly abandons its foliage; but before the
last yellow-green leaf is cast aside the fringe of the blood-red robe soon
to overspread has appeared. The white cedar (MELIA CONFERTA) permits its
leaves to become yellow and to fall lingeringly, but its bareness is
merely for a week or so. So also does the foliage of the moo-jee
(TERMINALIA MELANOCARPA) turn to deepest red and is discarded, but so
orderly is the disrobing and the never varying fashion of foliage that
the tree averts the scorn of the most respectable of neighbours.
Month after month of warm days and plenteous rain during the early part
of 1909 produced an effect in the acacias which cannot be too thankfully
recorded. The blooming season extended from March 29th to July 17th,
beginning with ACACIA CUNNINHHAMI and ending with the third flush of A.
AULACOCARPA. During a third of the year whiffs of the delicious perfume
of the wattle were never absent, for two flushes of A. FLAVESCENS filled
in the brief intervals between those of AULACOCARPA. This latter, the
commonest of the species on the island, produces its flowers in long
spikes in the axils of the leaves on the minor branches, weighting such
branches with semi-pendulous plumes laden with haunting perfume. The
fragrance of the bounteous, sacrificial blooms saturates miles of air,
while their refuse tricks out the webs of spiders great and small with
fictitious favours, and carpets the earth with inconstant gold.