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Acer palmatum

Acer palmatum is the technical name for the Japanese maple. A Swedish botanist named it in the 18th century after the hand-like shape of its leaves. Most maples’ leaves are hand-like: Canadian sugar maples (of the flag and the syrup) have broad palms flatly spread. The Acer palmatum, however, has small dainty palms with tiny tapered fingers curling like a child’s hand (the Japanese had already variously named it after the hands of babies and even frogs). And they seem especially alive, these little maple-hands, lifting and shifting and shyly beckoning.

But what do they offer? The fruit of this palm-maple is “a pair of winged samaras,” each holding one seed. A samara? “A samara is a winged achene,” a flat papery thing, shaped to allow the wind to carry the seed far from its parent tree.

“A samara is sometimes called a key,” (wikipedia continues) “and is often referred to as a wingnut, helicopter, whirlibird…” And they do travel. I was always picking up green sugar and silver maple keys as they parachuted around the sidewalks when I lived in Montreal. Their fine veined forms intrigued me. I collected them superstitiously, as if they might actually unlock something: open something, lighten something, transport me through a new sky. You’d find them in all sorts of places, birled around by the warm breezes, often with no maple tree in sight.

The little red keys, achenes, samaras of this Japanese maple are so much more delicate though. They could take off on the faintest breath of wind. Indeed, I plucked one from this tree in this garden last spring and carried it with me until I flew to Japan in the autumn and let the seed fall. The seed itself wasn’t so old but the dream was, long-carried and finally coming to fruition, as maybe a wee many-handed maple is now, in the wooded grounds of an old Shinto shrine somewhere in deepest Tokyo…

red winged keys of a Japanese maple against green lotus leaves

Bryngarw Country Park, Glamorgan, South Wales
9th June 2015

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The Minch

A grey afternoon and a blue evening slowly turning to gold. Out on the Minch, the sun has set behind the highest hill on Harris and, with its heat withdrawing, I climb inside to escape the twilight chill.

The wind is fair but the waters are choppy. Outside, I sat on the sunlit sidedeck and rolled with the boat as it lolled and leapt in the waves. Below deck, the motion feels less kind and I keep a low profile to keep my nausea down, lying out flat on the port-side berth.

I feel the loss of the sun, our companion star, sunk to starboard as we sail south. It’s when the sun goes down that I feel lonely on the sea. However, as the darkness thickens, my eye is caught by a streak of light out of one of the starboard portlites. A shooting star? A satellite? No, it’s Venus diving down the night, or seeming to, as we lurch up and down the waves.

All stars are shooting stars when seen through the portlites – veering down, and shooting back up as the boat rises and falls; pinpointed lasers tracking the brief windows of sky before the waves rear up to engulf the view. We’re rolling in wet hills of water but the stars fly up and stream around the peaks.

The Minch, North-west Scotland
13th May 2015

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eclipse

The worlds line up, the moon slides between us, the sun shrinks to a slim arc: angelic when viewed through blue glass, apocalyptic when seen through red – a devilish smile hanging in the sky, which thins and grins and swells.

I wait the full cycle of a clock-face for the swelling to continue, for the sun to become full again, for the moon to sidle off to the side – and disappear!

I wait, feeling the heat grow measurably on my face, and watch, because I have to; because I am a human, in this circling system; another body bound to the sun.

Cwm Garw, Glamorgan, South Wales
20th March 2015

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daffodils

Perth is a snowdrop festival: between the roots of trees in gardens, in the cracked courtyard of a derelict hotel and all along the banks of the Tay they gather, keeping company with the congregations of patchily-plumed black-headed gulls, which swoop and flutter over the river and its offerings of soggy bread.

The snowdrops are shy, or coy, hanging their heads delicately, while the crocuses burst rudely through beside them, pungent purple buds bulging skywards like proud phalluses. I try to prise one open but they’re holding their petals tightly closed, keeping their egg-yolk yellow insides stiffly guarded for now.

One small bunch of daffodils has come out, however – strangely early as they haven’t begun to open anywhere else on the river banks, nor were any open in warmer South Wales when we left yesterday morning on St David’s Day. They stand about nonchalantly in their frilly jaune abandon. And wee kids are out too in bright yellow vests, giggling at the gulls while they’re being shepherded about, enjoying a fluorescent florescence of their own. It’s all happening here. The season curls its yellow lip and coils, waiting to spring.

small clutch of daffodils with yellow-vested children in distance behind

Perth, Scotland
2nd March 2015