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For some years past the Swiss biologist Max Spinder has been
going for his summer holidays to Emplos, a cluster of little white houses on
the edge of the grounds of the Hotel Peleponnesus, high on the cliffs of Cape
Antonosias. Last summer, while walking under the centuries-old pines, he met
the American archaeologist John Harris Altenhower, who was at Emplos to study
the nearby ruins of the Temple of Kanos with a view to deciding whether or
not to involve the University of Cranstone in an intensive excavation program.
The two men, who share a love on Greece and a passion for exploring unknown
worlds, soon became fast friends.
One morning they decided to go for a walk along the cliffs, following a path
that wound between pines and myrtles until some three kilometers from Emplos
it reached the snow-white fragments of the Temple of Kanos, scattered in the
underbrush beneath the purifying sun. They talked of their work, and Spinder
was deploring the incredulity with which the scientific establishment, and
even some of his own colleagues, had greeted the news of facts that were as
yet inexplicable but which he had proved experimentally. When they were a stone's
throw from the ruins, Altenhower broke in on him to observe that more than
two thousand years before, in that very place where they were walking, Heraclitus
and Theaetetus had carried on the famous dialogue immortalized by Plato.
Taking his friend by the arm, as if he wished to re-create the scene, with
an ironically theatrical gesture he declaimed the key sentence of the dialogue: "But
if you, o Theaetetus, were to see among the myrtles a berry as white as a pearl
and as cubic as a cube, would you reject it with contempt and disgust as a
horrible whim of nature, or would you pick it with joy and gratitude, as a
divine gift from Thaumas?"1 It was then that Spinder brusquely shook off
Altenhower's hand from his arm left the path and worked his way laboriously
through the dense undergrowth until he reached a large piece of white marble,
maybe a section of column, that lay almost entirely hidden from view about
ten meters from the path. There he stopped, bent down and, almost overcome
with emotion, called out to his friend. When Altenhower joined him, anxious
to know what on earth was happening, Spinder pointed to two strange black plants
no more than twenty centimeters tall that stood upright like little bronze
statues in the midst of a minute clearing, a small circle of bare earth amongst
the prickly scrub.
There was a slight sea-breeze laden with the scents of seaweed and thyme, so
that the longest branches swayed on the pine trees and the leaves fluttered
on the bushes; but the two little plants remained perfectly motionless, throwing
a brightly colored and extraordinarily luminous shadow an the burnt clay soil.
It was as though the sun's rays had passed miraculously through them as through
a prism, casting on the ground not a shadow but a rainbow.
The two men were overcome with astonishment, and for a while they stood there
staring at the sight in helpless speechlessness. Spinder knew from experience
that the plants would dissolve into dust at the first touch, so he decided
to return to Emplos and fetch photographic equipment.
Unable to tear their thoughts away from the amazing vision they had just witnessed,
they both walked in silence. Suddenly Altenhower stopped dead. What extaordinary
intuition, he asked, had led Spinder to those plants, which from the path had
been completely hidden. The biologist smiled and said: “I’m flattered by your
high opinion of my powers, but at the same time rather surprised by your ingenuousness.
You must surely know that there was nothing miraculous about it. The water-d:viner believes in the movements of the rod, but the truth is that without knowing
it he has an exceptionally sensitive reaction to certain natural things: colors,
smells, kinds of earth, the shapes of plants, all things that derive the ultimate
subtleties of their nature from the presence of water under the soil. Like
a frog with an instinctive perception of a pond some miles away, he unconsciously
distinguishes differences of shade and size which would not be perceptable
to us. And the same holds true for the archeologist who 'has an intuition'
of a buried temple under a perfectly ordinary ploughed field, and the botanist
who 'has an intuition' of the presence of a parallel flower in the midst of
a thousand normal plants. They both read signs which little by little, through
the continual habit of specialized observation, build up in the deepest levels
of the memory. There they lie in readiness for the time when a particular combination
of automatic analogies will call up images long forgotten and now remembered
with instant clarity.”
The discovery on the cliffs of Cape Antonosias of the two Parensae parumbrosae,
which Spinder, thanks to a brand-new process, was able to transhabitate with
complete success to his laboratory at Hemmungen, was announced to the public
in the latest issue of The American Botanist. It was the first time that the
authoritative organ of the American Botany Association, which traditionally
interests itself only in normal botany, had really opened its columns to a
phenomenon of parallel botany. The evidence of Altenhower on the circumstances
of the find, the description of the plants themselves and, above all, the phenomenon
of the colored pseudoshadow which was perfectly visible in Spinder's photographs-all
these aroused a good deal of sensation in scientific circles. Even today, some
months after the news broke, the media are still devoting a lot of time and
space to the event.
One of the first newspapers to take up the story was the Greek daily Omonia,
which interviewed Professor Spyros Rodokanakis, Professor of Botany at Athens
University. This veteran botanist is well known to the Athenians for his provocative
attacks on what he calls "the invasion of reason." A few years ago
his vitriolic sarcasm did not even spare the colonels, who for some reason
best known to themselves chose to turn a blind eye to the violent attack on
their regime which the professor launched from the pages of Botanika.
But the furious arguments and controversies carried on by Rodokanakis often
close more doors than they open. He often unwittingly becomes the mouthpiece
of those who, in the name of tradition, wisdom, and a kind of freedom that
is never very well defined, obstinately refuse to leave the murky vapors of
their own mental status quo. And so it was on the occasion of the short interview
which he gave to the Athenian daily.
"It is fashionable," he said, "to stigmatize the mass media
for the devilish way in which they create false needs and consequently contribute
to the spread of manic consumption. But if labor-saving electric appliances
and the small family car can atrophy our muscles, there are in my opinion far
graver, more real and more imminent dangers threatening the survival of man.
The so-called hidden persuaders are merely vaitless shopkeepers compared with
those who in the name of culture and scientific information pollute our minds
and intelligences with ideas that could have no other purpose than to put an
end to our already frail ability to tell perception from fantasy, reality from
fiction, and truth from falsehood. These gentlemen have cynically sold us telepathy,
alpha-rays, flying saucers, mental deconcentration, acupuncture, the Loch Ness
monster, forks bent by willpower and the Black Box. These ghost hunters in
nonexistent laboratories have now, it seems, discovered in the vegetable kingdom
those anthropomorphic qualities which man himself is rapidly losing: the ability
to feel joy and sorrow, a real love of the arts, a hatred of tyranny and even
the use of a comprehensible language. We are told that we may safely and confidently
engage a saxifrage to spy on our unfaithful spouse. They encourage us to play
the Ungo and the kalamatiano to make roses grow more voluptuous and perfumed.
They suggest we should recite the poems of Verlaine to siraighten a wilting
aspidistra in the waiting room of a Parisian dentist. And they assure us that
while the voice of Gigliola Cinquetti weakens geraniums, that of Renata Tebaldi
stiffens their stems.
"
And now this glorious literature of fiction and fantasy has been enriched by
a new masterpiece: among the sacred ruins of Kanos, where Heraclitus himself
meditated, they have discovered a "parallel" plant as black as ink,
that foctoows a shadow as bright and many-colored as the windows of Notre Dame.
It will not be long before we hear that a cyclamen has been proclaimed Rector
of the University of Athens."
But in the fury of his rancor the veteran botanist lumps together the absurd
with the possible, madness with reason, good with ill. His mental inertia leads
him to express a mere hotchpotch of refusals and denials, when a more open
attitude, a calmer optimism, a more generous confidence in others, would certainly
have rewarded him with unsuspected creative happiness. Though perhaps we can
scarcely be surprised if the revelation of a parallel flora, splendidly enigmatic
in character, has given rise to incredulity, skepticism and, on occasion, open
hostility on the part of those who with blind bureaucratic resignation go on
cultivating the old common-or-garden plants in their common gardens. We have
to admit that in the wake of a perfectly understandable alarm, the fascination
of mysterious and ambiguous organisms suddenly wrenched from the deep shadows
of the jungle and from the mists of legendary valleys has lead at times to
the hasty formulation of exotic theories and shaky hypotheses.
But the episode of the Parensae parumbrosae is emblematic of what
is happening in the most recent phases of parallel botany. As we have seen
in our brief
review, research is going on in many different directions, and though we do
not yet have the comfort of clearly defined principles and the support of solid
structures, what is emerging is a "style" of method and research
that enables us to predict the general outlines of the new scientific discipline.
The circumstances of each new find enlarge our experience, and thereby increase
the chances of further revelations. Special techniques are at last permitting
us to transport plants which only a few years ago would seem to have been relegated
forever to some dark and secret place of exile. In laboratories throughout
the world, plants that have been, as it were, suspended for millennia between
life and death now await the explanation of the mysteries of their existence.
The sudden questioning of things that have always and in every way conditioned
our sensory and mental behavior demands a spirit of invention, an originality
of method, a freedom of interpretation normally suffocated by the enormous
weight of accepted ideas inherited as a result of our traditional scientific
education. Thus it is that a growing number of young scientists, in spite of
opposition from the establishment, are refusing to undertake research of which
the results are a fait accompli, and instead are committing themselves with
feverish enthusiasm to the exploration of an unknown world rich in exciting
possibilities.
In spite of the warnings of good sense and personal gain, these men have dared
to discard from their cultural and scientific baggage all those officially
consecrated ideas they worked so hard to acquire, and have shown themselves
willing to start again, to invent methods capable of penetrating the mysteries
of a Nature whose laws are hidden in some remote and unknown country of our
imagination.
It is reported of the Swedish philosopher Erud Kronengaard that he once said
to a friend: "There are two kinds of men, those who are capable of wonder
and those who are not. I hope to God that it is the first who will forge our
destiny." A statement which strangely but clearly echoes the question
put by Heraclitus to Theaetetus, a question to which the scientists now exploring
the "other" reality beyond the hedge have already given a resoundingly
emphatic answer.
1. For the Greeks Thaumas was the god of wonder. In the Platonic dialogue referred to by Altenhower, Socrates says: "Wonder is the emotion proper to the philosopher and philosopay begins in wonder. He was a wise genealogist who said that Iris, messenger of the heavens, was the child of Thaumas." (Jebb trans.)
PART ONE:
INTRODUCTION 1
General Introduction 3
Origins 20
Morphology 35
PART TWO:
THE PLANTS 57
The Tirillus 59
Tirillus oniricus 62
Tirillus mimeticus 64
Tirillus parasiticus 67
Tirillus odoratus 68
Tirillus silvador 70
The Woodland Tweezers 73
The Tubolara 78
The Camporana 80
The Protorbis 86
The Labirintiana 95
The Artisia 100
The Germinants 112
The Stranglers 117
The Giraluna 119
Giraluna gigas 134
Giraluna minor 1 43
The Solea 145
The Sigurya 162
PART THREE:
EPILOGUE 171
The Gift of Thaumas 173
Notes 178