It was resurrection, right there in our backyard – clear and undeniable. A tree we had assumed to be dead and gone was blooming again. Over many months, disease had withered and rotted its branches, then its trunk, which inevitably snapped in the wind, leaving nothing but a ragged stump.
Many more months later, able to bear the eyesore no longer, I stood before it, bush saw in hand, preparing to cut it off at the base. It was then that my wife, Kate, noticed tiny green shoots struggling out from cracks in what was left of the bark, and suggested we grant the revenant a reprieve until it either flowered or wilted yet again.
I am no gardener, so I made it my business to find out whether or not apparently deceased golden wattle trees were in the habit of staging a second coming. A little research revealed that yes, Acacia pycnantha often regrows from damaged trees, and within weeks the gnarled old stump was crowned with a spray of yellow flowers. Salvation was at hand.
An odd fact about the distribution of the plant piqued my curiosity. The golden wattle – Australia’s floral emblem – is native to the east coast of Australia. So why does it grow wild on St Helena, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic?
The answer is that Napoleon Bonaparte, on being exiled to St Helena in 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo, brought golden wattle with him from Empress Josephine’s garden. Josephine, who was enamoured of all things Australian, filled her garden at Malmaison with animals and plants from the Great Southern Land, and Napoleon planted golden wattle on St Helena to remind him of the love of his life. And though the fates decided otherwise, there was a time when he could have given her the Great Southern Land itself.
But then, when I told Kate of my serendipitous discovery, she looked at me quizzically and asked, ‘Are you talking about the grevillea?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The stump that’s flowering again is a grevillea.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Anyone can tell a grevillea from a wattle.’
Anyone but me, apparently. My consolation, however, is that had it not been for my appalling ignorance of native flora this story would not have been written.