Newspaper Article

Ballet Dancers who Love Rain
The fuchsia is my flower. Deep in a distant childhood I see it adorn a window where I am standing. There is a street outside, a town, and I glimpse a moving-van down there - is it October 1st? - but what I really see is the wonderful drapery of flowers with red-and-white skirts, like little ballerinas on tiptoe in a grey expanse or belles-of-the-ball in crinolines. And the red buds, Christ's drops of blood, some of them have fallen on the window-sill. It is closing in to winter and they did not make it.
Later in life I have met fuchsias in many places in the world and learnt how they can vary. I have seen them in the jungles of Mexico and Florida, but where they are really in their element are the cold, meagre heaths far down on the southern side of the world. The South Island of New Zealand and the mountain slopes and wide open spaces of Patagonia, regions with wind and mild rain, but where the frost stays away. They love rain.
Explorers and conquerors early had their eyes on them. They are named for a German botanist, Leonhart Fuchs, who lived in the 16th century. In the 19th century a few species were brought to Europe, but it was not until the last century that man seriously began to manipulate this patient shrub ready for any and all transformations.
The hybrids are countless and grow more numerous by the year. I have grown the all-whites, the blue-reds, the red-lilacs, the pink-purples, and the all-reds. They can be made to flower all through the winter, but it is best when they can rest in cool peace for four or five months. They grow quickly. I have a three-year-old with a trunk as thick as an arm.
Having just come home from Ireland I have the memory of my most venerable meeting with this delicate and strong flower: large parts of the bleak western side of the Emerald Isle turned out to be covered with Fuchsia magellanica and other hardy varieties. Here outlawed and hunted people have hidden in times of need.
On Inishmore, one of the stern and stony Aran islands outside Galway, there were gigantic shrubs where the red and purple colours called to the greyness surrounding them. They dominated the vegetation on the entire island rocking lustily in the cold wind and mild rain.

Article under the heading "The Academy's Flora", Sydsvenska Dagbladet 2 August 1993, by Knut Ahnlund. (Translation A.Westin)

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