Oleanders -- An Overdose of Pink

by Fanny Teissandier

August 4th, 2020

In late June, I travelled to the Mediterranean coastal town of Sète, west to the French Riviera. The city became a popular, and somewhat upscale, touristic destination in the late 1960s, when mass development projects changed the shape of the French seaside forever. In the place of wild, unpopulated, and rocky calanques (as my grandparents nostalgically remember them), wide sand beaches were created to welcome vacation goers looking for space and smoothness. Sète had long been a prestigious, bourgeois port town, home to famous artists and poets like Paul Valéry and George Brassens. Walking through the city, the flavour of that wealth, and the historical distinctiveness of the place, are palpable. But the most striking feature of the town is certainly its architectural style, which recalls the practical, industrial, and utopian designs of the postwar period. Amongst this superimposition of squares, between the glass and the concrete, blossoms a singularly modern protagonist of Mediterranean life: the laurier-rose (oleander).

Tracing the history of this plant, and its spread throughout the south of France, is difficult, and may require some archival research in urban planning records. Suffice to say, over the past few decades, the oleander has proliferated to the point of taking over Sète completely. Two simple qualities might explain the plant’s ever-growing popularity: its resistance to heat, little need for water or rich soil, and its long-lasting colourfulness – a landmark of present-day Mediterranean imagery. Oleanders grow in cracks from under the hot grey soil that surrounds them; they also populate terraces, private gardens, and parks. Often, they appear next to the perhaps most noticeable feature of the new Mediterranean landscape – palm trees, which, carefully disposed in impeccable lines, echo tape-à-l’oeil Californian sceneries. Moreover, oleanders are renowned for their toxicity: ingesting a single leaf can lead to death. Because they do not attract bees, their practical advantage for creating balanced ecosystems in cities and gardens is very limited. The laurier-rose is therefore a purely decorative plant. The sight of its pink flowers immediately evokes private pools, palms, and jet-setting sea resorts. Oleanders have no smell; and when I was a kid, my parents warned me against touching them, as they are poisonous.

I first remarked the oleanders from my bus seat, as we drove next to a parking lot near the beach. They had settled – or rather, had been settled there by city workers – in every possible little alley, in between the slots, and along the pavement. Even though I was familiar with the popularity of the plant (and I have one in my own garden), I had never been quite so overwhelmed by their number, and their consistent, almost implacable, identical appearance, so ostentatiously displayed under the blazing sun. (Some species are not pink, and in many gardens, white and red kinds are also to be found – but not in Sète.) The oleander has penetrated the city so deeply that its colour has dispersed all over its streets, particularly closest to the sea. A giant, homogenous spill of pink.

Those were the loose days of June, a month after France had lifted most of its lockdown restrictions. Everyone was relaxing on the beach, unhindered, and spirits were full of life again. The streets were not too busy (it was early summer, before the start of the holidays), and people would take their masks off the second they stepped outside of the bus. But soon, the pink and the heat would almost become nauseating, as did the palms planted into the concrete, and all little chairs, and flowers, and shop signs. The modernist buildings and their glassed terraces faced the sea overbearingly. The smell-less oleanders almost seemed to exude a cloying scent. Quite literally, toxicity was everywhere: in the grey avenues which, burned by the sun, appeared white; in the too numerous palms and pink plants that made you think of chlorine and shining blue; and, of course, in the invisible virus that we spread every step of the way. With the accelerating tourist season, sea resorts like Sète have become symbols of what the French government calls the ‘holiday effect’, deemed responsible for the second wave. The 1960s utopian projects, recent coastal Californisation, a world pandemic... Oleanders grew before them, but now their toxic leaves race toward the water, multiplying.