SA will oppose the planned national biological control of the controversial weed, Salvation Jane 1, so I read.
The weed helps fodder supplies in dry seasons and the apiarists have been stung into activity because it supports honey production.
I’m glad in a way. I dislike biological warfare. Anyway, you can’t smoke Salvation Jane or make herbal tea with it but it’s no mean painter of the landscape when it’s in full bloom.
Paddocks, wind scoured and scowling with dust can be transformed to a regal purple. Distance comes in technicolour, the hazes are tinted as the Jane folds into the hollows of the low hills or bedspreads itself across the slopes.
Bees sing small cantatas of contentment over the forest of flowers and retire to the little village of hives in a buzzing traffic jam, nectar breathalysing in the fragrant air.
Closer, the Salvation Jane looks slightly raffish with hairy stems and undisciplined leaves, like someone you see under a soft light and at a distance and who looks beautiful but when you see her closer she’s a little coarse maybe.
Maybe, but the poet and artist like beauty to be flawed. It has more character.
When I was young and could see my knees, I trampled through the prickly colonies of Salvation Jane and even rolled in them with our old dog. The plant could clog fields and farmers didn’t see much beauty in it. But in the late afternoon sun it would look pretty, its purple wildernesses a cosmetic for the old drab paddocks.
I wondered what Wordsworth would have said. So, with apologies, although none to blologists:
I wander lonely as a sheep
That drifts along the dusty flat.
A look-out for a snack I keep
For that’s the way I grow my fat.
But then I bleat a glad refrain
My counter lunch—Salvation Jane!
I wander busy as a bee.
That buzzes from the crowded hive
And wonder that’s for little me
And then I bumble in a dive.
Your nectar’s got me going, Jane
So, honey, fill ’em up again!
When heliotrope the paddock’s span
Will dazzle both the cow and colt,
The Canberra coots will darkly plan
A biological assault.
We’ll back you, Jane, against the nation.
Shout hallelujah and salvation!
Max Fatchen
Footnotes:
- Usually referred to as “Paterson’s curse” in States other than SA, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium_plantagineum_in_Australia