Singing to fire clouds
A new line of research extending from Songs of Lyrebirds Sung to Glaciers, which came out of responding to the Black Summer Fires, Australia.
Exactly 12 months after the fires I saw an amazing flowering field of pink flannel flowers in one of the severely fire impacted areas of the Blue Mountains world heritage forest.
These small *fire ephemerals* only flower after profound fires; a person would be luck to see more than two or three flowerings in a lifetime.
Actinotus forsythii has small furry looking seeds that can survive in soil for over 100 years, waiting for the next fire to pass. The soilbank contains seeds from numerous past fires- all waiting.
The seeds are pyrophitic; only germinating after contact with chemicals in smoke.
Im interested in these small beauties that only exist because of catastrophic events, and who only understand the world through post disaster times and landscapes; of vegetal hopefulness.
Spending time at the Sydney Botanical Seed Bank; part of the UK-led Milllenial seed bank project.
Thinking of the parallel human hopefulness in the act of seed banking; of the calming routine within scientific actions of collecting seeds, testing, categorisation, archiving.
And of the vegetal hopefulness of a plant adapted to a climate where fire occurs (and will occur more frequently); and of seeking a niche to survive and thrive after such a destructive event.
In The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing writes- through the lens of a mushroom that thrives in human-disturbed land- about survival in ruined landscapes; of survival in capitalist ruins.
Hopefulness depends on your view point.
Also thinking about Pyrocumulonimbus flammagenitus (pyroCbFb) clouds.
PyroCb are in the genus flammagenitus; distinct from other clouds because they form from fire rather than typical atmospheric processes. Clouds for the pyroscene- a cloud that forms above a source of heat, such as a bushfire, volcanic eruption, or nuclear explosion. The cloud grows tall enough to generate its own thunderstorm; with lightning, strong winds, and even fire tornadoes- worsening the forestfire. The PyroCbs birthed in the Black Summer Fires were some of the largest ever recorded- injecting smoke aerosols that then circled the southern hemisphere. Similarly, the 2021 LA fires, and 2023 Canada wildfires.
Almost mystically, clouds are categorised by a genus-species-variety system, similar to biological taxonomy.
And thinking of the hot dry winds that whisper words of fire to the dry earth- Santa Ana winds of California, Diablo winds of Argentina, Meltemi winds of Greece, Foehn-type winds of Australia. Are there first Nation names for this wind?
And of the lyrebirds- the male building his display mound; his song and dance site to perform and attract females- perfectly mimicking all the birds in the forest around him; such that he even fools the original singer. A vocal shapeshifter and sonic historian.
Thinking of this song singing.
Songs of energy gathering in Pyrocumulonimbus
Sounds to awake seeds from their torpor
Songs of hot wind in the upper atmosphere. Of winds with names in Spain and Portugal- Levante, Leveche, Terral, of Foehn-type winds in Australia.
Sounds of chemical formation of carbon bonds over flames
Sounds of a lyrebird singing the songs of all the birds in the forest around them, on performance stage he built for this purpose.
Hope is such an overused word in the end- Holocene, implying that this is all we have left in an inevitable climate trajectory and an emotional uptick for late Capitalism. Using the word Hopefulness with this understanding, and drawing on on the lessons from seeds.
Thinking of the winds
More about the lyrebird research: HERE
- Refs
- Peterson, D. A., et al. (2021). “Australia’s Black Summer pyrocumulonimbus super outbreak reveals potential for increasingly extreme stratospheric smoke events.” npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 4, 38
- The Untold Story of Purocumulonimbus https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/91/9/2010bams3004_1.pdf
- https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/en/clouds-definitions.html
Above: Songs of Lyrebirds Sung to Glaciers, in ‘Horizons Ablaze.’ installation views Taichung Art Museum, Taiwan July 2026