We all love our masses of intense colour in spring the daisies 

 each more brilliant than the last, the vygies gleaming in the mid- 

 day heat, and all the array of bulb flowers ; but when all this 

 is past the white flowers seem to me like " the still small voice ", 

 the ultimate core of things, something perhaps we never quite 

 grasp or only for a moment in passing. 



To-day I have been taken by a friend to see a piece of vlei- 

 ground that was completely burnt out about nine months ago. 

 The ground was still quite black no cover at all except the 

 stumps of protea and other coarse bushes and big grasses 

 that had completely filled the place. But, as if to compensate 

 for all its ill-treatment, pushing their way through the hard 

 black soil were hundreds of belladonna lilies in varying shades 

 of pink and white, so poignantly fresh against the charred 

 background. Between them were pushing up groups of Buphane 

 ciliata. Though their individual blooms are small, the whole 

 umbel is attractive with its pink stems and pedicels in the 

 candelabra head. Then there were the brilliant Haemanthus 

 coccimus, almost scarlet in colour, pushing through the hard 

 ground. None of these plants will show any leaves until the 

 rains come next month, and the brilliance of all the varied 

 colours of the flowers gives the impression of a flamboyant 

 emboidery on a black background. I have lived here over 

 twenty years, but I had never seen this Buphane in flower before. 

 Now there are hundreds. The superficial observer can easily 

 explain it : " they only bloom after a fire ". Yes, but the 

 blooms are formed in the bulb the season before. Do they 

 remain dormant year after year until there is a fire again, 

 when all the enveloping grasses will be cleared away and a 

 good dressing of wood ash scattered over them ? 



In the garden I have in bloom two beautiful heads of Bruns- 

 vigia banksiana. This is not a Cape species : it blooms with the 

 leaves and expects water in summer, coming as it does from the 

 summer rainfall area. I think the individual blooms are larger 

 than Brunsvigia gigantea (now B. orientalis] : the pedicels are 

 long and delicate, and the flowers a lovely clear pink, a very 

 much prettier shade than the belladonna lily with its sugar- 

 icing hue. This is undoubtedly the best Brunsvigia I have seen. 



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