Where Have All the Boronia Gone? A Posthumanist Model of Environmental Mourning

Abstract

Scented or brown boronia ('Boronia megastigma') is a slender shrub endemic to the South-West corner of Western Australia. Said to possess a "heady, sentimental perfume" (Parker 1962, 4), the fragrant blossom is found in the heath lands and eucalypt forests between Busselton and Albany, south of the capital city Perth. Bearing small brown and yellow flowers toward the end of winter (late July-September in Western Australia), boronia was collected in the wild, shipped by train, and sold as an ornamental by Perth streetsellers in the early to mid-1900s. In 1947, novelist and columnist James Pollard (1900-1971) wrote of boronia in the Perth newspaper 'The West Australian'. Evoking his experience of the wildflower in sensuous terms, Pollard extols boronia's "perfume stirring memories" (4). He shares a "scented memory" with an onlooker in the street as Pollard - then in his middle years - recollects picking boronia in his youth.