Picture a Leaf...

"Of all the wonders I have beheld in all the magnificence of the world this shining flower stands alone. Never before and, I suspect, never again will I such beauty and poetry in nature."

Picture a leaf. I know it's not difficult or even especially poetic but that is where our story starts. It was just a leaf that caused all the trouble. Leonard had travelled the world; he'd been ridiculed by the media; threatened by his peers but now he had his leaf. A simple passage in a plant collector's diary from 1803 and a small sketch had been the start of it for Leonard and perhaps where this story should have started but if we go back that far we may as well examine Leonard's impetus for exploring botanical oddities, maybe go back to that one moment in a biology class when a professor lectured on the seemingly immortal Pinus longaera. We could even go back to the first time he planted a seed and watched it grow. But we have chosen to begin with his leaf, in a carefully chosen pot in a greenhouse of its very own. Next to the leaf are a pile of papers, Leonard's research and taped to the pot is, in Leonard's handwriting, a copy of the diary extract and a copy of the sketch. It's hard to say what made Leonard travel the globe retracing the diarist's steps, hoping to see what he had seen in the French Alps. The two men, over two centuries apart, had somehow connected. A diarist in the early 19th century had spoken to a botanist in the early 21st century in words only they could understand. And so Leonard went. But he didn't see. The beauty that our diarist had seen was no longer there. Leonard had been heartbroken. One more exquisite example of Earth's elegance was denied him by the passage of time, climate or man. A barren patch of soil was all that remained of the only living specimen (and of this Leonard was sure, he had spent more time then he dared count searching for another reference to it and had found, after a while, that all libraries all over the world not only have the same slightly musty smell but none of them ever have a copy of David Attenborough's 'Life On Air'). But there was still hope. Don't forget that our diarist was a plant collector and would almost certainly have taken a cutting or a seed sample. So Leonard began another search (this time taking his own copy of 'Life on Air') for any record of the diarist's finds being collected anywhere. Shortly after his 1803 expedition the man had disappeared under fairly mysterious circumstances that only seemed to fuel Leonard's determination to finish the man's work. The diarist had not been a famous plant collector and never had the chance to show off his findings so it was slow and frustrating work for Leonard. The man at Kew stared at him blankly. RBG Edinburgh laughed at him. The Smithsonian hung up on him. Until finally, in a private collection in Winchester, he found what he'd been searching for. A seed. Leonard planted the seed. And we return to our leaf. Leonard had expected some kind of attention from the botanical community when he informed them that he was growing an extinct plant. Then they'd see, he had thought. Leonard would stare blankly at Kew; he'd howl with laughter at Edinburgh; he'd slam the phone down on the Smithsonian. But nobody seemed to care, nobody even seemed to believe that the plant was extinct, or even unique. His leaf was almost universally dismissed as something commonplace and nothing special. Leonard copied out his research, proved his finding, drafted letters and sent copies of the original plant collector's diary to every scientist and every institution he could think of with increasingly irritable responses. And then, this shows how desperate he had become, he went to the papers. "Man Grows Leaf" went the mocking headline over a picture of Leonard proudly holding his seedling in its pot. For a while the 'Loony Leonard's Leaf' story was popular among the kind of newspaper hacks who'll kick a man when he's down then write about it. What trouble he'd gone to, what expense, what time only to grow one little seedling that everybody else agreed was probably an alpine variety of Saxifraga. How they laughed! And how Leonard's botanist friends begged him to shut up about his bloody leaf. So Leonard shut up. He watched his seedling grow and the flower bud develop, spending most of his time in the greenhouse now, and waited to see what his friend in 1803 had seen. The diarist now seemed like the only friend he had, Leonard's single-minded fascination with his plant had isolated him from everybody he'd known before. Sometimes Leonard wondered what had become of his diarist. All they found in his greenhouse, the last place he'd been seen before his strange disappearance, was an empty pot and some of his 1803 finds, including the seed Leonard was currently cultivating. The flower bud grew every day and Leonard sat next to it at a makeshift desk in the greenhouse, still trying to find other references to the odd little flower, still quietly reminding the botanical community that he and his find existed. One morning he opened a package he'd received. Inside he found a book and a letter. The letter was short. The book was longer. It was a book on myths. The brief letter urged him to turn to p124. There was a crude sketch of his plant. Leonard was quite taken aback. He went on to read the tale of a plant that mesmerised the observer, filling them with an all-consuming passion. It warned that touching this plant was not a good idea. It was bad enough to make contact with the leaves which would change you and prepare you in some way that the myth didn't specify. But then the flower would bloom. After this the myth was unclear but the general idea seemed to be that you would become part of the plant, you would be its seed somehow. Leonard laughed to himself, but nervously. This was the only other reference to the plant he'd ever seen. There was no return address or postmark on the envelope and no name on the letter so he couldn't make any further enquiries. He set the book aside and as he did so he happened to glance at the back of his hand. For the first time he noticed his blood was running green. He caught his breath, clutching at his wrist then turned slowly to his plant. Knowing its cues, the bud chose that moment to slowly open and reveal petals of such splendour that Leonard forgot about the myth and his hand. The graceful, long stamen unrolled and the petals seemed to stretch and expand to fill Leonard's whole world. Nothing but fragile, shimmering botanical beauty was in Leonard's mind as he reached out a finger to touch his discovery. If Leonard had been in any state to notice anything but the flower he'd have noticed the green blood in his veins pumping harder and brighter as his finger neared the petals. The moment contact was made the petals began to contract again. Leonard flinched and tried to pull away, fearing he had killed the new flower, but he found that he could not. Looking closer he could see that tendrils snaked out from his own hand and entwined with the long stamen. He tried to scream but he couldn't make a sound. He tried to stand up but he couldn't move. Plants don't move, said an annoyingly cool and logical voice in his head, plants don't vocalise; you are part of it now; you wanted botanical oddities, friend, you got it. Once the flower closed it began to retreat back into its seed. But it did so with the slow patience of the plant world. Leonard watched it, it was all he could do. He couldn't even hope that someone would find him, nobody visited him anymore. His mind was screaming, terror mounting as he felt the little plant tug at him. But he couldn't run away, couldn't shout for help. The bud pulled gently at him, so slowly Leonard didn't notice until he realised he was off his feet and his arm was up to the shoulder in the pot and he was ever-shrinking. His brain howled as the soil closed over his head and below he could see the beckoning seed, its carapace open and waiting. The warmth of the seed was almost inviting as Leonard felt himself tucked gently inside. The seed began to close. Leonard wished he could scream, cry, shout, he wished he could put up a fight. He was now so terrified he was feeling sanity slip away. He could sense time stretching endlessly ahead of him. Time in which he would wait in a seed. Wait until some other silly bugger tried to resurrect an extinct plant. Wait in the darkness and the warmth and the madness. Alone in the screaming solitude of his seed. The seed closed.

All they found in Leonard Bassey's greenhouse after he mysteriously disappeared was some seeds and research material but no sign of the plant he'd been so obsessed with. Kew reluctantly received the seeds and research, consigning them with some embarrassment to an archive box, unwilling to connect themselves with the ravings of a madman and some inconsequential seeds. To date nobody else has shown any interest in continuing his work.