Hippeastrum...

I think. There was another magnificent one in the local co-op titled Papillo Hippeastrum, white base with maroon and green shades in streaks and great florid petals. Not unlike butterfly wings ... although I thought of the ears of a splendid elephant flapping and from one angle of a florish of trumpets by 2 musicians back to back. Mesmerising. A collector may be very happy to find them there. A critic who came in provided me something to think on, who commented about the Papillo at 100AUD "For a FLOWER. I've better things to do with a hundred dollars."

Myself, it has never before occurred to me that buying a potted flowering bulb might be supporting the arts. Myself, I had not ever seen Hippeastrums so spellbinding. To think the experience just of viewing them cost not a penny. I paid my 2.50 for a bag of 5 lemons and left, wondering curiously who might in an unknown to me future be the benefactor or collector, lover or sucking up transgressor buying a placatory gift for an aggrieved significant other who happens on these remarkable pots of floral splendour and makes the purchase. It hardly seems reasonable to consider separating them. Seemed unlikely to me a dedicated Hippeastrum collector will. I think maybe there is Rodin, there is Manet, Monet, and so on...and these Hippeastrums.

My grandmother had a bed of Hippeastrums (the common red and white), planted to form the name of the then populated mining town, Nymbool where my mother was born in North Queensland in 1913. That is a wonder and curiosity too, isn't it that a flower can be so many different things to so many people.