Some fynbos plants are recognised and admired from a distance. Others are not so lucky, have to be visited and observed at close range to be appreciated or even noticed. Few people become familiar with the inconspicuous ones. Like lonely old people, the plant living remotely, secretly or hidden, sometimes in full view is a vegetable Eleanor Rigby.
There are botanists who will die for discovering her, making a noise that ruins her privacy and serenity, all for the fame from her name.
The big, in-your-face, flowering shrubs shout from a distance, illustrations of celebrity life. A guaranteed heyday at every bloomtime, they are common property popular with the crowds. Well off and happy? Surely not if they're dug up, robbed of flowers and their environments polluted and degraded.
People tend to be kind to strangers for short spells, let alone those from other species. The smile disappears while the glance still lingers, the vacant stare lacking recognition soon telling it like it is.
Among the bigger and striking fynbos plants are shrubs like Protea repens and trees like P. nitida, inaccessible and unperturbed by what passes on the highway next to them here in the Kogelberg by the sea. Noticed briefly by many from afar, familiar to some that drive past here regularly. These plants define the panoramic but vaguely remembered countryside. At the critical moment of attempted recall the plant name often slips the mind.
Appealing landscapes on fenced off private properties next to the road make up the persona of the land... free for all to see all the time, yet mostly inaccessible. What is pretty there catches the driver's momentary glance and the passenger's longer, semi-vacant stare, or some longing.
A little of it persists in memories, vague acknowledgments that nature is stunning, that the country is pretty, that life is good. Habits shape people, also the habit of seeing without noting, the habit of ignoring the best that was seen on the day, preparing to stare into the middle distance before old age.