Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 90: 179–194, 2007 ‘Green above, paler below’: descriptions in the literature of the colour in trees from southwest Australia M J Grose Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 3052
[email protected] Manuscript received June 2007; accepted October 2007 Abstract This paper outlines descriptions of colour in the literature pertaining to the flora of the South- western Australian Floristic Region, comparing pre-settlement exploration by Dutch, French and English voyagers with modern general texts. It was found that colour has been and continues to be poorly described, preventing any analysis of the biological diversity of colour to enable comparison across or between floras or species. Forthcoming work on more accurate colour description using the Natural Color System of Sweden is foreshadowed. Keywords: Colour description, botanical history, south-western Australia Introduction Colour is an aspect of biological diversity not addressed previously, although with suburban This paper is a specific survey of how colour has been development and changes of species in suburban described in the literature and in early exploration in Australia the colours and textures of vegetation are south-western Australia. This study arose from questions changing. Yet the colours particular to Australia have regarding the changing colours of the landscape due to long been part of the national psyche, as much as the extensive urban development in south-western Western ‘emerald’ of Ireland and the ‘green and pleasant land’ of Australia, within a centre of world biodiversity. Perth, England. For the indigenous people of south-western Western Australia, has one of the fastest growing urban Australia, the region remains the land of the Rainbow sprawls in Australia and, while most studies or analyses Serpent - a Dreamtime spirit who brought the gift of of urban sprawl on the world scale refer to sprawl as colour to the world (Nannup, pers.comm.).