ON A SCILLY ISLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 4

ON A SCILLY ISLE

A NEW ZEALAND GRAVE The Isles of Scilly, lying off the coast of Cornwall, are renowned for the profusion of narcissi, daffodils and other lovely spring flowers which are grown there and dispatched by the million to glorify London and other big cities. Geoffrey Grigson, who recently visited the islands, told 8.8.C. listeners something of the lives, homes and history of the people in this corner of Britain immortalised by Tennyson. He mentioned that in a churchyard on St. Mary's, the largest island, he saw, among other memorials, a white wooden cross with the inscription: "1942, L. J. S. Bush, Sergeant, Royal New Zealand Air Force." He was one of the airmen stationed there against the Germans, who used to raid the Scillies earlier in the war. His New Zealand grave was ringed with New Zealand cabbage trees.

There are many unfamiliar trees and plants on the islands—gums, bottle brushes and so on from Australia, and many other kinds from New Zealand. The islands are warm, after all, with next to no frost. On Tresco, the chairman of the Council of the Islands, Major Dorrien-Smith, grows about half of all the New Zealand species of plant, including ratas, koromikos, pohutukawas, and tea-trees.