‘It’s easy, behind fuchsia leaves, to find signs, signals and tracks of what happened and what is yet to come’
Fuchsia became a silence companion in little parlour talks from bourgeois’ Ottomans to Cheeseman’ dark dinette.
Aunts gave them to brides as a gift. Men transplanted in buckets that are previously used for milk, then for water, and at the end, when they were pierced by rust and used, were perfect vases to nurture fickle fuchsias’ bushes and small trees.
She let loose into amatory and daring travels, leaving space to the imagination of unaware, young, and healthy gardeners.
The grace of a pink Fuchsia is a gift for a beautiful and shameless woman. The pleasantness of orange fuchsias is advantageous for those women that have to find out hidden talents to compete with lookers: that are elegance, strength, finesse.
The fragility of the simple Fuchsia flower is necessary to remind passionate men that daintiness and lightness are virtues essential for both women and friends.
The two-coloured Double Fuchsia Flower with its violet and pink petals, was born for those who nurtured love as a dream or a discipline.
All Fuchsias are waiting with their petal-like sepals, waxy and oozing colours, their protruded stamens. They are waiting for blooming.
Jelly belly, M&M’s, Tic Tac Fuchsia flavoured. Have you ever seen a Fuchsia fruit? It is an iridescent brown bean. It is a stretched pearl attached to a long and sticky stalk, a ripe jewel that will be eaten by the hungry scattering birds. They, the scatterers, spread Fuchsia seeds through excrement like they were memories. They must be acid to be fertile. Their membrane becomes sour and thin. Well, I’m talking about excrements, but this is the way to seed beauty: defecating. Why don’t you taste the fruit as well? It doesn’t taste much but at least you contribute to fertilise.
English people love to do it.
French people love it too but in a more creative way.
In the Caribbean, it happens everywhere but not in Italy.
One or very few more fuchsias’ crossbreeders are active in Italy.
And yet, it is easy. You need a flower, the type you like. Stamens, bringers pollen, must be removed, while you have to leave only pistils. Now, you have your feminine flower, it will produce fruits and will ripen seeds coming from our crossbreeding. Our variety’s father will come from a new variety of flower. You must cut pistil, the bigger ‘thing’ than the other ‘things’. You must conserve only stamens, bringers of pollen. You need a thin and small brush. With it, you collect your pollen, only after it is mature. The movement is like shelling. When you have collected the pollen on the brush, you gently place it on pistil. In fuchsia, the pistil is so cover and protect by petal and sepals, as a small skirt.
When you have placed pollen, you leave it fertile there to pollinate. From this point, you must wait, sending away pollinators insects and similar trying to contaminate our creation, our reproduction.
When the fruit is mature, you can clean it from the pulp and leave it dry.
It’s better for you to puncture the peel before you plant it. After having planted it, wait till germinate. When it germinates, wait until blooms. When it blossoms you can contemplate their flowers. Many of them will be like to mum, others to the father. Someone will be very ugly, others completely unexpected.
Patience and perseverance are the keywords of crossbreeding.
An unusual practice in Italy.
There is not even a Fuchsias Italian Association, not even few members of the Fuchsias International Association.
What will be of our world without an Italian Fuchsia?
I like women with showily long earrings, their posing style, their necks carry the load of the sky. They wait to be looked at, without disappointing the viewer. If earrings are fuchsias, the woman and the plant brag, show-off and feel realised. When by misfortune men wear them…what a screw-up! They look like dress-up enthusiastic turkeys, stiff as touchy coloured parrots.
According to the legend who wears a Fuchsia becomes part of the plant. One may feel like a root, dark and introverted, robust and determined. Others may feel like newly bloomed green leaves. Many are narcissist concentrated on the appearance, as coloured flowers.
The legend goes on, behind each flower, behind each petal a story hides, handed down from bee to bee, from a hummingbird to another, nocturnal, teeming with life and hot tedious days. Fuchsias try to fill up, actually, they do, fuchsias’ lovers lives with sense, that is flower no longer plant.
If a Fuchsia makes you ill, you’ll end up dying for love. Behind each flower, inside the rich and shiny calyx of each single flower, endlessly repeated stories tell about the love of who came before.
The hostess beside me wears a fuchsia uniform, with a small jewel on the left pinkie. She looks like a small ‘thing’, a kitty meowing every time. Poor creature, at first, I didn’t consider her. Those old travellers always there weighing the dedication of that flying worker to be healthy, to breathe although tight uniforms. My hostess is not on duty, she is returning to home. She is texting to a man with a mobile phone. She has a baby or this is what I have decided about her. She has coloured nails, not red not pink but I’d say fuchsia. She is flying for an Easter Company, so precise and meticulous. Her uniform is not beautiful but orderly. She has in blush pink pocket a tissue where Fuchsia flowers are stamped. There are many unordered, coloured, perfect flowers in the beautiful dark fuchsia and blue, the colour of shirt.
It’s easy, behind fuchsias leaves, to find signs, signals of what was and what will be. Few lovers, few connoisseurs, as real shamans, can understand and attend to fuchsias. They are priestess with the ability to join different element, that is the ability to extrapolate from fuchsias lifeblood what they don’t have, the beauty.
Matteo Ragni
Scientific Committee