XXV


The one thing we can say with certainty is that dahlias never appear in a Dutch still life. The seeds of this big bold blousy New World, new kid on the block were brought from Mexico to Spain after the Conquest but sat in the Botanical Gardens in Madrid, and it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that growers started to experiment.

And what a thing those pioneering plantsmen created! Tight like a pompom, spiky like a cactus, gracefully unfurling like a languid lily and in every red-hot tone imaginable, the effusive dahlia has many forms and seeks – and gets – attention wherever it appears.

Here the two sides of its powerful personality beautifully collide. As a staple of the English herbaceous border, a swarm of unfurling petals sits in a simple wooden truckle, with the grower’s secateurs discarded by its side after a bumper raid of the cutting garden. But reminders of its more exotic origins enclose the scene – the opulent fabrics and feast of shiny fruit, a skittering lizard, caught in the act, two tiny iridescent dots of beetles and the parakeet, whose glorious colours and flashy plumage make the perfect companion to this most fabulous of flowers.