Page 22 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 6_2023

Nature

RHAPSODIES

IN BLUE

The Ancient Greeks
did not see the sea as
being blue.

Blue is such an odd colour. It is said to be the colour that people
across the world like best. It is also the rarest colour in nature.

BY JAMES CLARKE, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARY BROADLEY

olour specialists and brand back and, say, the iridescence of the Cape All the other colours of the prism are
consultants, mindful of the Glossy Starling, but there’s a mysterious subdued.
psychological effects of paradox. When we are depressed, we say
colour, say blue is the colour we are feeling blue. We speak of having One of the most breath-taking sights I
Cthat people associate with blue moods. have ever seen was in a canopy forest
depth and stability. It is a calming colour not far from Cuiaba in central Brazil. I was
symbolising trust, loyalty, wisdom, faith, There’s that rather melancholy music following a gloomy footpath deep under
truth, and heaven, and is considered genre known as ‘the Blues’. As a term for the forest canopy and there, on the ground
beneficial to mind and body. depression it’s been in use for at least 200 in a shaft of sunlight, gently fanning its
years. The American bird artist, John James wings, was a blue morpho butterfly as big
Cycling through Andalusia and Portugal Audubon wrote in his 1827 The Birds of as my hand. Its almost dazzling iridescence
a few years ago I noticed how, in the America of having “had the blues”. caused it to shine like an electric light – all
villages, the white-washed houses had a trick of the tiny reflective surfaces.
their windows and doors framed with Some slimmers, apparently, use a blue
blue – a carry-over, I was told, from when light to illuminate the interior of their It seems that only in relatively recent times
the Moors occupied the Iberian Peninsula. fridges. It apparently decreases the appeal – the last few thousand years of Homo’s
They believed blue warded off evil spirits. of its contents. million-years of existence - have we had
the ability to see the colour blue. There’s
In Portugal, the Moorish craze for blue, Blue is indeed the rarest pigment in a tribe in Namibia that still can’t. Shown
particularly in the form of blue ceramic nature. In fact there are no truly blue a chart with a dozen green squares and
tiles, is as strong today as it was when flowers, nor blue birds, nor blue butterflies a single conspicuously bright blue square
the Moorish empire collapsed 500 years for it is not pigment that makes them blue. among them, none was able to spot the
ago. Whether it is agapanthus or plumbago or blue.
the brilliant blue of a kingfisher, it is all a
Much as we love blue, we could never trick of nature. The blue results from light The literature of the Ancient Greeks makes
be attracted to eat blue-coloured food. falling upon microscopic light-scattering no mention of blue. Homer’s Odyssey refers
We love a blue sky and the way the sun surfaces in feathers or petals which allow to black and white and occasionally red and
picks out the vivid blue of a kingfisher’s only blue light waves to be reflected. yellow – but blue, never. The colour of the
22 DPL issue 6 2023
16 DPL issue 4 2023