If you hike or drive through Cape Point National Park, at the south-westerly tip of Africa, inland from the capes of Good Hope, Maclear and Cape Point, you will come across clusters of plants that look, from a distance, more like the natural rocks of the landscape, rather than anything botanical.
These are everlastings or, to give them their correct name, Syncarpha vestita. When grown for picking and drying, they will last - almost - forever. In the wild, they're beautifully strange plants, with papery petals, and an upright posture that doesn't bend much in the wind. This rigidity makes them look solid and can lead the visitor to mistake them for the rocks strewn across much of the terrain.
But, if you get up close, you will see that the "rocks" are made of multiple stems topped by flowerheads that range from white to silver-grey, giving them the common names of silver everlastings or Cape snow. When newly in flower, some folk say they look like static flocks of very clean sheep!
Like many of the plants of the Cape Floral Kingdom, these everlastings are not troubled by fire. In fact they need it to germinate fresh crops from seed because they only thrive for about 7 years. When Louise, heroine of The Girl from Simon's Bay, climbs up the mountain as a fire sweeps down, she might have passed blackened clumps. I wonder if she knew that from fire would come new life? But Louise is blind to all about her as she climbs. She has just learnt that the man she loves will not be able to marry her. There will be no rekindling of their romance. But, before writing this passage, I had already planted a seed that would change her direction. There would be new life for Louise by the next season, as well as for the silver everlastings...
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