Ferrari Versus Ferraria

I am one of those exceptionally fortunate people who owns a Ferraria.

I keep my Ferraria on my east-facing terrace here in Andalucia. Rather, I have a whole collection of Ferrarias, much to my extreme joy. They remain largely under cover during the chilly and unpredictable Granada winter but come Spring - wow and gosh and yippee! They're a thrill a minute.

Oh... apologies if you are scratching your head and wondering about the glaring spelling mistake. Did you think I meant Ferrari? If so, then perhaps I had better clarify something.

A Ferrari is a very expensive and luxurious Italian sports car, typically available in red and not much else besides - or so I believe because I don't really know a lot about such matters.  A Ferraria, on the other hand, is a plant. To be precise, a curious South African relation of the globally familiar irises.

We´ve established some basic differences between the two, then. Is it really necessary, therefore, to labour the point? Well... yes. I think so, at least.

Plant first, car second. A Ferraria sleeps under the soil all summer, safely tucked away from the baking heat in the shape of a curious stack of storage organs known as corms. But come the Autumn rains, an incredibly complex series of biochemical and other processes (happenings that we still barely understand), creates a miracle. The miracle of growth. Of life. And, depending on the species, the waking Ferraria produces a set of linear or strap-shaped leaves that stack one-upon-the-other throughout the winter, burgeoning, expanding, forever changing if you have an eye to observe and a spirit to wonder at this fascinating process.

Then the flowers. Extraordinary. As dark and as lustrous as a moonless night or pale as silk shot through with the first light of dawn, and a host of exquisite colours and combinations of colours at all points in-between. Petals that flounce and crisp and curl so outrageously that a flamenco dress looks like a crumpled rag in comparison.

The Ferrari (that's the car, in case you'd forgotten), either goes or doesn´t go. And that's all that it does (or, for a great deal of the time, all that it doesn´t).

The Ferraria,  depending on the species, can be picked up for a couple of euros/dollars/pounds on eBay.

The Ferrari - apparently (I don´t have the details to hand) - will probably cost you anything along a steeply ascending scale that rockets upwards from a mere $140,000.

The Ferraria is, I would imagine, completely unknown to the vast majority of the world´s inhabitants.

The Ferrari, thanks to the all-pervasive and insidious entity that is Western culture, is undoubtedly an iconic representation of uber-wealth, style and exclusivity familiar to billions across the globe - just possibly with the exception of the residents of North Sentinel Island and a few as-yet unviolated scraps of Amazonia and New Guinea.

The wild Ferraria, depending on species, is under serious threat along with its astonishingly bio-diverse and breathtakingly beautiful southern African habitat. Once gone, it is gone for eternity.

The Ferrari can be recreated at any moment according to whim and wealth.

What to buy your loved one, then, as a token of your undying love, a representation of love that will outlast this brief mortal sojourn? Ferrari versus Ferraria? The car, or maybe  (in your loved one´s name) an acre of the most exquisite flower-rich land on earth, to be cherished and protected in-situ and in perpetuity?

Dilemmas, dilemmas. I'll leave you to ponder on what we truly value, and why, as I potter around my humble terrace and spend a few minutes of pure joy as I contemplate the emerging shoots of my little collection of Ferraria plants and think of the priceless floral extravaganza to come.