Landscape at Le Cannet, the white trees (1940) by Pierre Bonnard. Painting held in a private collection. Public domain.

The first of March is officially the start of autumn Down Under, but here we are, trying to keep cool in an ‘unseasonal’ heatwave. Perhaps a sign of things to come? Or, perhaps we’re still looking at our seasons from a misguided European perspective? Or, perhaps both.

This year, in our garden at least, I will start using the five-season system proposed by Tim Entwistle, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria, based on his look at nature around him and on the fact that Indigenous communities around this country apply varying categorisations of the seasons.

This is what our five seasons look like according to Tim Entwistle on his blog, Talking Plants:

[Our] seasonal year starts with sprinter (August and September), the early Australian spring. That’s when the bushland and our gardens burst into flower. That’s also when that quintessential Australian plant, the wattle, is in peak flowering across Australia. Next is sprummer (October and November), the changeable season, bringing a second wave of flowering. Summer (December to March) should be four months long, extending into March when there are still plenty of fine, warm days. Autumn (April and May) barely registers in Sydney but further south we get good autumn colour on mostly exotic trees, as well as peak fungal fruiting. Winter (June and July) is a short burst of cold weather and a time when the plant world is preparing for the sprinter ahead. [my bolding]

The new words ‘sprinter’ and ‘sprummer’ are so-called blend words, respectively of ‘spring + winter’ and ‘spring + summer’. So far, these words have not made it into our dictionaries yet. Let’s see if they will catch on …