Rice Rice Paper
Spring is definitely here and the garden is an explosion of intense Spring green, an orchestra of bird song and it keeps on giving. It’s all about living the season, to be immersed in nature, reconnect with my surroundings and to rebalance. Gardens and gardening have always had a profoundly transporting effect on me ever since I was small, in all their majestic detailed, whimsical and captivating forms.
One plant that has caught my attention this past week, is located at the front of the house, in a side ‘room’ next to what once was the garage and original entrance and driveway to the property. It’s whimsical, captivating, subtropical, exotic, and looks like something straight out of The Lorax by Dr Seuss.
Its giant exotic leaves when you’re looking up at them against the sky and the light shining through them, are actually quite striking. World Flora calls it Tetrapanax Papyrifer or T Rex. It also has a very interesting history in making rice paper. This subtropical large, fast growing plant is currently more than 5 metres tall, and has a thicket of large upright stems, topped by large palm-like leaves that have felty downy undersides. It’s strange and wondrous. The flowers are extraordinary appearing in early winter; they are subtle, very pale yellow creamy pompoms attracting a multitude of pollinators especially bees. The leaves are delicate, and they tear and tatter very easily when handled just like rice paper, but T Rex has a terrible suckering habit. I’m finding maintaining it is becoming a problem. New plants keep popping up, and I have a real jungle on my hands. The suckers are stubborn, and refuse to be dug up. In fact, the new plants grow from runners of the ‘mother’ plant that are several feet underground. I read that at Great Dixter in the UK, in the tropical garden, they cut down their T Rex plants to the base every year so they regrow with no bare stems. Sound advice! My T Rex currently has bare stems. Every time I go near it, I have to wear goggles and a face mask so I don’t breathe in its soft sprays of indumentum which can be quite irritating to the skin and lungs.
Despite of T Rex’s downfalls, it does have its uses. The pith from the stems are used to make rice paper hence its name Tetrapanax Papyrifer. As the Lorax would say, “it’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.”
Workers harvest the pith, then boil the stems to remove the outer bark exposing the cylindrical core of the white pith. The pith is then rolled against a knife on a hard surface, shaving it into thick ivory textured sheets of rice paper. This delicate material is used traditionally for Chinese calligraphy, watercolour paintings and artificial flowers. During the nineteenth century, there was a booming export market of watercolour paintings - highly sought after by western diplomats, merchants and travellers. The pigments remained incredibly brilliant looking, unique and glowing, almost 3 dimensional. Western naturalists eagerly collected botanical and zoological illustrations of native flowers, vibrant butterflies, insects and exotic birds.
Sadly, the paper industry isn’t as booming as it once was, but I think T Rex is one of many plants that changed the world, and it’s in my garden. I don’t have time to make rice paper, but from now on, I’m definitely keeping an eye on those suckers!
