A fairy crown. A flowery tiara. A chaplet. A corona for Corona-virus times! When I got the brilliant idea to mark another gardening season with a series of “What’s in Bloom” floral wreaths for my head, below….
…I was not inventing something new. People have actually been crowning themselves with flowers and greenery for millennia. Take Dionysus, for example, the Greek god of all things wine and too-much-fun (the Romans called him Bacchus). This is how Caravaggio imagined him, circa 1598, with a Bacchanalian wreath of grape leaves.
During a visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles a few years ago, it was a painting by the Victorian artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema that made me peer a little closer. In ‘Spring’, from 1892, the artist had created a procession of celebrants wearing floral crowns wending their way through the streets of Rome. The Getty’s website says: “It is unclear exactly which festival Alma-Tadema meant to depict, but the many references from ancient Rome all indicate a springtime celebration of fertility and abundance, perhaps most resembling Floralia, honoring Flora, goddess of flowers. British May Day traditions were also rooted in the Floralia festival and were revived during the 1800s to celebrate spring and nature in the face of rapid industrialization. On May 1, children decked themselves and their village with flowers, danced, and crowned a May Queen.”
When I was a little girl, I attended a Catholic convent in Victoria, B.C. called St. Ann’s Academy. It was on a beautiful property filled with gardens and orchards that the nuns tended… religiously. (Sorry, couldn’t resist). In my 3rd grade class photo from 1956 (!) below, you can see the massive rhododendrons behind us. Today, St. Ann’s is a Provincial Heritage Site and ‘events venue’ with a small museum. But my point here is that every May 1st, or May Day, we girls would have a procession through the grounds carrying flowers to a statue of Mary while singing “Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May”. Thinking back now (as an atheist), it still seems like the most beautiful idea, the floral crowning part at any rate. Who wouldn’t want to be “queen of the May”?
It was her own Catholic iconography that Mexican painter Frida Kahlo invoked when she painted her 1940 Self-PortraitDedicated to Dr. Eloesser. From the Frida Kahlo website: “Frida’s necklace of thorns is just a single strand, but it draws even more blood. In the background, leafless broken-off twigs profiled against an opalescent sky look like the dead twigs woven into Frida’s necklace in the self-portrait with the hummingbird. No doubt the dry white buds that mingle with the twigs (and that droop from Frida’s headdress as well) likewise refer to her desolation. Although Frida has flowers in her hair and wears the earrings in the shape of hands that Picasso gave her when she was in Paris, she looks like someone dressed for a ball for which she has no escort. Frida’s work from the year in which she and Diego Rivera were separated demonstrates a heightened awareness of color’s capacity to drive home emotional truths.”
My photo project, on the other hand, was dedicated whimsically to the Goddess Flora…..
…. as featured in Botticelli’s famous Primavera, circa 1482, with its 500 identifiable plant species. How many can you identify?
*****
After seeing one of my spring crowns, my son said I was ready to go to Coachella. I had to look up why that would be. Ah…. a music festival in California! Of course, they wear flower crowns there and it’s all groovy, except, most are fake flowers! That would never do. And I did note that some famous floral designers had designed massively ornate headdresses for garden muses to celebrate 2019 Garden Day in the UK. They were lovely, but not really what I had in mind. I just wanted to celebrate the flowering cycle for my garden by…. putting it on my head! It seemed like my inner child was whispering to me, as if Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell had made a perfectly reasonable suggestion about head-wear. So I decided to call it a ‘fairy crown’, and my first edition for April 7th features the earliest spring-bloomers in my Toronto garden, common snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), purple and orange crocuses, bright-yellow winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) and the sweet, hard-working little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. (Some friends suggested I do the series as “how-to make fairy crowns”, which made me laugh. My crowns last as long as it takes to make a selfie, then proceed to fall apart everywhere.)
After five long months of winter, the return of spring to my Toronto garden is a glorious time. Endorphins rise in me like sap in a maple tree. And while it’s not quite time to retire the snow shovel and winter coat, everything that’s magical about gardening lies in the weeks and months ahead. Each spring I make little bouquets of my first tiny bulbs to create that joyous feeling indoors, too. It’s often still chilly in the garden and cutting a few flowers for the kitchen table lets me explore them up close with my camera – and my nose! And it always starts with sweet-scented snowdrops. I made this image for a project a long time ago, using a crystal shot glass from an antique “gentleman’s travelling bar” that my father-in-law gave to my husband. The caption is dramatic, but not far off reality. By late March, the gardener is parched for beauty; spring lets us drink it in.
But spring teases in our part of the world, thus the common name for snowdrops.
For the past decade, I’ve kept track of the date of the first snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) to bloom in my garden with the earliest appearance being March 7, 2012 and the latest April 16, 2014. That’s a difference of almost 6 weeks, illustrating the vagaries of winter in the northeast. No matter when they bloom, there’s still a chance that a late snowfall will cause them to close their petals and serve as an appropriate reminder as to how they earned their common name. Snowdrops are easy to grow from a small bulb that should be planted in autumn as soon as they become available, since they deteriorate quickly. But I’ve moved flowering clumps around in spring with great success, something that can’t be easily done with other bulbs. They prefer humus-rich soil in part shade, but like to dry out in summer.
But when they flower with all their sweet-scented goodness after the dearth of winter, there is nothing like a pristine clump of snowdrops, which is why the gardening world has so many “galanthophiles” who grow, rave about and trade various species and cultivars of snowdrops.
Though I appreciate that kind of obsession, for me the common snowdrop is perfection, though you must either get down on your knees or pluck a few for a nosegay to truly appreciate the shimmering, white flowers with their green-edged inner tepals. The bonus? They emit a delicate perfume – much easier to savor in a bouquet than in the garden.
Within a few days of the snowdrops opening, the silken, purple “Tommy” crocuses (Crocus tomassinianus) appear. Here they’re joined by an early showing of the Dutch hybrid crocus ‘Pickwick’ whose fellow hybrids usually appear a week or so later.
A few days of spring warmth and sunshine encourage all the crocuses into bloom together. When that happens, my front garden looks like the Easter bunny arrived to sprinkle crocuses, instead of hiding eggs – and it becomes a favourite spot for passersby to click photos. Because my front garden is never ‘tidied’ much in autumn, it’s a trick to get out and cut back the old stems of the prairie perennials from last year while the soil is still frozen so the little bulbs can shine. But they always come up through scattered leaf mulch and stubble – all good food for the earthworms and soil organisms.
Here are four of the Dutch hybrid crocuses, their names lost in the mists of time. When I originally planted the crocus bulbs en masse in the 1990s, many were dug up immediately by squirrels. In fact, a few days later, the garden looked like the craters of the moon. Now I immediately mulch bulb plantings with leaves (even getting some from my neighbours’ boulevards) and water them down so the squirrels don’t have a ‘nose’ for the freshly cultivated soil.
When it’s warm enough to fly (15C-59F), honey bees seek out the pollen-rich crocus flowers. They’re especially fond of Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’.
Look at this happy vignette, with crocuses joined by Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’.
Of all the spring irises I’ve tried and lost, this little iris is a true survivor, shrugging off harsh winters and late snowfalls to show off her indigo-striped, pale-blue flowers alongside her crocus companions. Hardy, easy and beautiful, she makes good-sized clumps over the years and is an attractive cut flower in a tiny vase. A small caveat: she does tend to get a virus that causes blue splotches on her petals and is transmissible to other members of the iris family. But since I have none growing near her, I don’t bother about it.
Gardeners in the northeast are accustomed to spring sputtering forward slowly and occasionally backtracking to winter (like this year). It’s been known to happen in my garden, and I shared the rhyme below on my Facebook page on April 3, 2016.
There once was an iris named Kate
Who sulked when winter stayed late:
“I’m tired of the cold and this foul April snow.
Had I known, I’d have remained well below!”
It happens to crocuses, too, but they have adapted to cold, snowy weather by keeping their flowers closed and their pollen protected.
Winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis), those lemon-yellow flowers in my fairy crown, have evolved a similar adaption to protect their pollen from inclement weather, as you see below.
The odd snowflake aside, spring has now sprung in my garden and the robins are seeking out earthworms once again.
And if you don’t feel inclined to make your own fairy crown, you can always cut a few stems of these tiny treasures to bring indoors and appreciate at nose level. Spring is here at last!
According to etymology online, a “nosegay” was historically a “small bunch of flowers used to delight the sense of smell”. The word arose in the late 15th century when ‘gay’ was a noun (now obsolete) meaning ‘a gay or bright thing’. Nosegays gave rise to the tussie-mussie, a handheld bouquet in an ornate, cone-shaped, metallic vase popular in late 19th century Victorian times that became a kind of fashion accessory (plus mobile air freshener in those pre-deodorant days.) My spring nosegays are different from the summer bouquets I make at the cottage with my meadow flowers…..
…. or the bouquets I make for the living room mantel, like this one with boughs of cherry blossoms and peonies…..
….. or the ones I’d make in hollowed out cabbages and pumpkins! This was autumn 2002.
I think of my nosegays as tiny bouquets that indeed often delight my sense of smell, especially because the spring blossoms I include are often growing too low for me to bend in order to smell their perfume. That is definitely the case with fragrant snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), which I adorned with a small rhyme one spring after a long, snowy winter.
Snowdrops in a shot glassHow apt, I think.I could get drunk in these tiny, nodding blossoms..
Savoring, after a long sober winterThe first intoxicating sip of spring
Snowdrops flower very early, often persisting under spring snow, along with crocuses, Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ and fragrant viburnum (V. farreri), so they make lovely companions. This tiny bouquet from March 25th this year had such a sweet scent. Speaking of ‘this year’, spring flowers emerged early, were buried in snow a few weeks later, and have enjoyed the cool temperatures, allowing them to last longer – something that doesn’t happen often in Toronto,
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There is such a delicacy about these early bloomers, best appreciated up close. I photographed this on April 19, 2020.
Way back on March 20, 2012, a record warm and early spring, I needed three little vases to showcase my spring bulbs. From left we have blue and white Siberian squill (S. siberica and S. siberica ‘Alba’) with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), Dutch hybrid crocuses (C. verna), and Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) with Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.
This was April 6, 2020. I liked the little dash of orange from the Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’, along with the ice blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and pink ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis (C. solida).
When the Dutch crocuses are at their prime, sometimes it’s fun just to showcase those silken purple petals. This was from April 12, 2014.
Similarly, I sometimes like to pick just one perfect spring bloom, like this Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’ on April 9, 2012, and give it the spotlight.
On April 23, 2013, I selected just a few stems of ‘Violet Beauty’ glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) to photograph. Interestingly, this cultivar has not persisted in my garden, unlike the parent species.
We have a set of antique crystal shot glasses just the right size for a nosegay of spring bulbs. This was April 18, 2019, and featured the usual suspects.
Pastels flowering at the same time, on April 10, 2020, included light pink Viburnum farreri (which I blogged about recently), pink Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’ and ice-blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides).
These two little bulbs grow together in my garden and look just as lovely in a votive candle holder. Blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’. These would normally be finished by now, but our cool 2021 spring kept them in good shape for my April 25th photo.
I adore grape hyacinths and wanted an early one in sky-blue. So last autumn I planted loads of Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Blue’ and I am delighted. They’re at the front of this little nosegay, along with pure-white Narcissus ‘Thalia’, broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) with its navy-and-royal blue florets and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.
Last April 29th, I combined Muscari latifolium with the wonderful Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.
Last week I plucked just a few flowers from my garden to place in my green Irish mug. Included were three daffodils, ‘Thalia’, ‘Stainless’ and little ‘Golden Echo’, which has become such a favourite that I wrote a blog in its honour. As well, I added a stem of peachy-orange Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ which wafted its scent in my kitchen. Behind are two tulips, T. fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’, left, and T. praestans ‘Shogun’, right.
This little nosegay had a bit of everything! It was May 4, 2020, so I was able to partner white Narcissus ‘Thalia’ with (clockwise from front) a sprig of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with a stem of magenta Rhododendron ‘PJM’ right behind it; lilac-purple Corydalis solida;Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’; broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium); and wine-purple snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) at right.
I love bright, sunny colours and this little nosegay in a bud vase brightened up my kitchen on May 13, 2020. Along with spice-scented Narcissus ‘Geranium’, front, I used the orange, lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’; Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ (which lasts a long time because of its sequential blooming); and a few sprigs of forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) and forsythia.
As May arrives, other parts of my garden wake up. Spring 2019 was quite cool, so the Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) and Corydalis solida were still in flower when my masses of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) started flowering. I celebrated these “little blue flowers” on May 22, 2019, including common grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) and Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).
One of my biggest garden problems here at home in Toronto is the steady advance of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) through plantings. In my case, it was here when we bought our old house 38 years ago and my mistake, had I known what was coming, was not to eradicate it immediately. Now it is the tough groundcover for most of my front garden and a lot of the back. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to deter the native, prairie perennials that emerge through it for summer. I have had fun with lily-of-the valley, turning it into a fragrant chapeau for a garden party, which I detailed in a blog. And I also add a few stems to whatever is in bloom, including grape hyacinths, Siberian bugloss and forget-me-nots, like the nosegay below from May 22, 2020.
My lawn contains lots of native Confederate violet (Viola sororia var. priceana) and I’ve included them in the odd nosegay with forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths. This was April 22nd in the record-warm spring of 2012.
In my final photo, made May 23, 2020, I’ve used the green shot glasses and flask from a vintage ‘gentleman’s travelling bar set’ that my late father-in-law gave my husband. Rather than whiskey, it includes the first perfumed blossoms of Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii) along with blue camassia (C. leichtlinii ‘Caerulea’), the final flowers of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, lily-of-the-valley, and common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). And that’s a wrap for my spring nosegays!
After five long months of wintry weather in Toronto, there is nothing more uplifting than the first flowers of the small spring bulbs. Over many years, small bulbs and corms in my front garden have multiplied, their clumps becoming gradually bigger, or seeds have scattered about until there are pools of colour. My camera finger is always itchy after being out of service since the last of the fall colour dies down, so I head outdoors as often as I can. In this spring of self-isolation, that might be several times a day and I’m often greeted by neighbours stopping to see what’s in bloom. The cold March and April temperatures have made the flowering parade move as slowly as sap up a maple trunk, but every year starts the same – with the snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). Because they can easily be moved in flower, I have been dividing this old snowdrop clump and digging sections into my front garden.
I’ve also made a habit through the years of cutting these tiny flowers and giving them the high-fashion studio treatment, like the snowdrops below in an antique shot glass.
Next to emerge is usually a tie between species crocuses and little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. I adore her. She was bred in 1955 in England by E. Bertram Anderson Her mother is pale yellow Iris winogradowii hailing from the Caucasus mountains. That gives her extreme cold hardiness and her tendency to shrug off snow.
Her father is pale purplish blue I. histrioides from Turkey, lending her the pretty pale blue hue. Her existence is the result of only 2 seeds produced in open pollination breeding work by Anderson, a founding member of the RHS Joint Rock Garden Plant Committee and president of the Alpine Garden Society from 1948-53. She flowered in 1960 and was named for the wife of Anderson’s friend Eliot Hodgkin
This year, my crocuses were wonderful, both the species “tommies” (Crocus tommasinanus) and the bigger, slightly later-flowering Dutch hybrids.
On the one warm day we experienced so far this April, I found honey bees foraging for pollen on the crocuses. I’ve always wondered who in my neighbourhood has beehives, since the property size requirements for beekeeping are fairly stringent in Toronto. Having done a little research, I think they likely originated in the hives on the roof of Sporting Life department store about a half-mile from my garden.
I often combine these early bloomers in a tiny bouquet. Even though they last only a few days, the joy they bring is in inverse proportion to their size.
Crocuses, of course, have their own chalice-like charm – even if they decline to stay open long once removed from sunshine.
My front garden in early spring is anything but neat, given that I mulch it with leaves in autumn and leave many cut perennial stems to biodegrade where they fall. I do lighten the leaf mulch in late winter a little, raking some off so the small bulbs don’t get lost in the duff. This is a side-by-side view of my front garden this spring on March 23rd and April 13th. Once the crocuses fade, the Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) starts to turn my entire garden azure-blue. Most springs, the native cellophane bee and bumble bees make great use of the scilla carpet, but this year’s temperatures have kept most bees in their nests.
My garden’s “blue period” also includes the amazing, rich-pink Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’.
I always love the combination below, ‘George Baker’ with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa). A few weeks ago, I divided some of my corydalis clumps while in flower and spotted them throughout the garden. That deep cherry-pink is too good not to spread around!
And, of course, I’ve given George his own studio cameos in the past as well……
The glory-of-the-snow has been ready for its closeup….
…. as has the cultivar ‘Violet Beauty’.
Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) are ultra-hardy little bulbs featuring pale-blue flowers with a darker blue stripe.
Here’s a closer look of that sweet striped face.
Between the Siberian squill, the glory-of-the-snow and the striped squill, the colour theme of these chilly weeks of early spring is most definitely blue. And with most everyone in Toronto now into their second month of self-isolation, the neighbours have been telling me how much they’re enjoying watching my front garden change every week.
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White Siberian squill (Scilla siberica ‘Alba’) come out a little later than the blue ones.
Photographing them in a tiny bouquet lets me appreciate details of their flowers that often go unnoticed when they flower en masse.
Among my favourite of the small spring flowers are Greek windflowers or wood anemones (Anemone blanda). These are tubers, rather than bulbs, and they need to be soaked for 24 hours prior to being planted in autumn. Their daisy-like flowers always cheer me up – though they only open wide when the sun is shining. This cultivar is ‘Blue Shades’.
Putting just one windflower in the tiniest vase reveals the beautiful contrast of the bright yellow stamens with the silky petals and fern-like leaves.
‘Pink Charmer’ is lovely, but tends to be mauve….
….. and finally there’s ‘White Splendor’.
My broad-leaved grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) have just emerged and are still tight. The light flowers at the top are sterile, while the deep-purple ones at the base are fertile.
Here they are, below, in a little salt shaker vase. Common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) emerge just a little bit later.
Along my sideyard path under a big black walnut tree is a colony of Corydalis solida that comes into bloom a little later than the pink ‘George Baker’ in my front garden. This species is very vigorous and will make its way around the garden and even pop up in the lawn. In fact some gardeners consider it a weed – but I adore it. And after it finishes flowering, its leaves turn yellow quickly in the thicket of Solomon’s seal just emerging, then it disappears until next year. You might also see it hybridizing with some of the colourful cultivars, if you can find them to order.
Like all these little spring treasures, it is such fun to snip a handful to bring indoors so they can be appreciated for their beauty up close.
Soon the forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) will be in flower. I have loads of these biennials throughout the garden and their season is very long. By the time my crabapple tree is in bloom along with later tulips and daffodils, they will be pale blue clouds underneath.
But for now, I enjoy adding the very first forget-me-not blossoms to the little bulb bouquets that now include common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum)……
….. and the native Confederate violets (Viola sororia var. priceana).
All this early beauty of the little bulbs, this re-affirmation that spring brings colourful renewal – especially this year, when we need it so desperately – is one of the most beloved aspects of my own garden. I simply would not be without my snowdrops, crocuses, corydalis, puschkinia, scilla or grape hyacinths. And then, as if by magic, all these wondrous little chorines of the first act will quietly wither and disappear under the later weeks of tulips, daffodils, camassias and the emerging foliage of summer perennials, lying dormant below the soil surface so they can perform the same miracle early next spring. Needless to say, the foliage of all spring bulbs must be allowed to turn yellow and ripen in order for continued photosynthesis to nurture the bulbs as long as possible.
Meanwhile, my garden moves on through myriad subsequent scenes, not in the least hindered by all these tiny bulbs that helped me bid farewell to winter. Here is my front garden over the space of twelve months. This year I’m filled with anticipation – and nothing but time to enjoy it.
**************
I buy almost all of my spring bulbs from my friend Caroline deVries’ online retail store flowerbulbsrus. They are available at reduced prices until August 31st and are excellent quality. A good selection of the small bulbs is also available at www.botanus.com in British Columbia; they ship throughout Canada. (I purchased my own cultivars of Corydalis solida in Canada from gardenimport, which sadly is no longer in business). In the U.S., small spring bulbs can be purchased from my friends Brent and Becky Heath at https://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/. They have discounts for ordering before July 1st.
I spent a few lovely weeks this autumn touring Greece with a group of rock gardening enthusiasts from the North American Rock Garden Society. I will admit up front that I’m not really a rock gardener. I do love trees but up until this trip, I didn’t particularly identify with plants that huddle near the earth’s surface nestled up against limestone shelves or serpentine outcrops or hanging on for dear life in an alpine scree. It might be a physical thing on my part (knees, back): when others kneel or crouch or prostrate themselves completely (like my North Carolina friend and true rock gardener Cyndy Cromwell, below, with whom I bonded on a 2018 garden tour of New Zealand)….
…I just…. stand there… looking down.
But rock garden plants aside, I am a photographer of all types of plants with my own stock image library, including lots of bulb photos. So searching for the “fall-blooming bulbs of Greece” to add to my inventory sounded like good fun.
And best of all, the tour was to be led by someone who had been a Facebook friend for six years, a young Athens native whom we plant geeks had nicknamed the ‘King of Lamiaceae’ for his special affection for the mint family, the salvias, teucriums, catmints, thymes, etc. that grow in the Mediterranean and similar climates the world over. But apart from the mints his knowledge of the entire plant world was prodigious, he had a good sense of humour, and having done his Masters degrees in California and England he was fluent in English. Though his real name is Eleftherios Dariotis, Lefteris for short, I know him by his Facebook handle, Liberto Dario. Either way, “freedom” is the theme.
If you’re not “on Facebook”, you might not know that there are thousands of interest groups that cater to your special passion, whether it’s mushrooms or madrigals or the Monkees. Needless to say, my groups revolve around the plant world. Sometime in 2013 I decided to inject a little fun into the “Plant Idents” group for which I am an administrator by using my photo library to create plant puzzles, mixing up plant photos, placing them in a numbered montage, having people guess their identities via the Latin genus name, then unscrambling the correct genus initials to solve an anagram. So instead of “Words with Friends”, we played “Plant Words with Friends”. I called them Botanagrams. A little complicated, admittedly, but they were heady fun that required everyone to make rapid-fire guesses and exchange geeky, comic asides. And woe to those with slow internet service! A few years ago I wrote a blog celebrating the puzzles, so I could remember what fun they were. Of all the nerdy ‘puzzle people’ I met and continue to call friends – Amir, Jo, Rebecca, Amy, David, Amrita, Kathy, Alys, Rosemary, Margaret, Deb and so many more – Liberto Dario usually got the really hard ones. (P.S. the anagram solution to the one below was “the vital sexy bits” for plant reproductive parts.)
Sometimes I changed up the puzzle. The one below didn’t have an anagram to solve, but was all-Lamiaceae with honey bees aboard.
So… on a night late this October, we all met at an outdoor cafe in Athens for the introductory tour dinner — and the virtual Facebook friendship became actual. Thanks to Cyndy for the photo of jet-lagged me (I hadn’t slept in more than 30 hours) and our tour guide, Liberto. As it happens, I’ve turned quite a few Facebook friendships into actual friendships: a lovely dinner in Sebastapol CA; a personalized garden tour in Santa Barbara; a fun 7-person nursery meet-up in Portland OR; and a delightful 5-person garden picnic in Seattle WA.
THE TRIP JOURNAL
Bright and early the next morning (and for 11 mornings after), it was on the road to search for the autumn-blooming flora of Greece. We stopped along the busy highway northwest of Athens beside a woodland of scrubby kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), under which we found our first Cyclamen graecum, below, with oak behind it. This little drought-tolerant oak gets its common name from a Sanskrit word krim-dja, which is also the root of the words crimson and carmine. Why? Because it is the source of an ancient red dye; indeed it is a word for red in the Persian language. However it’s not the oak itself that yields the dye, but an insect that feeds on the oak, specifically the kermes insect or κόκκος. In her book “Color – A Natural History of the Palette’, Victoria Finlay writes: “Dioscorides described how kermes was harvested with the fingernails – scraped carefully from the scarlet oak it lives on. But curiously he described it as ‘coccus’, meaning ‘berry’, and did not explain that it was an insect at all.” The kermes trade routes would weave their way through the ancient world: Spain paid its taxes to Rome in sacks of kermes from the oak they called “chaparro” and the Turks used it in carpet-dying.
In little meadows in forests of Greek fir (Abies cephalonica) at the base of Mount Parnassus, we found Colchicum parnassicum.
Later, in a coppice (charcoal) forest of Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) near Mount Kallidromo, we thrilled at masses of Cyclamen hederifolium emerging from fallen leaves. I loved this ecological partnership.
The next day, our hotel near Kalambaka was our base as we visited the otherworldly monasteries at the UNESCO site Meteora. It’s not easy to describe these sedimentary rock formations topped with buildings erected in the 15th-17th centuries, so I’ll just show you.
It’s easy to see why so many tourists make the trip to this part of Greece.
Later that day we travelled to a rock face in the foothills of the Koziakas mountain area of the central Pindos range near a busy, one-lane bridge over the Portaikos River. Did I mention that rock gardeners like to live dangerously?
But there were tiny roadside treasures…. common in Greece, but new to us.
Returning towards Kalambaka, we stopped at the base of Mount Olympus which was shrouded in clouds. The home of the gods in mythology – and a national park – it actually spans 52 peaks including the highest, Mytikas (2917 metres-9570 feet) and Stefani or “Zeus’s Throne” (2909 metres-9544 feet). As others searched the area for bulbs, I kicked around pieces of marble, which were plentiful, as I thought about all the marble monuments and temples we would see in Greece. And I inhaled the sweet, minty fragrance of calamint (Clinopodium nepeta), which we found at many locations, usually being foraged by a big bumble bee.
The first day of November arrived and we were in Smokovo looking “for bulb treasures on the serpentine rocks”. Nobody said anything about looking for bulb treasures in the pouring rain.
The little crocus below was our goal…. Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, but it cancelled its showing amidst the serpentine rocks for obvious reasons. And despite having received the memo about waterproof shoes from our host, I failed to act on it. Fortunately, our lunch venue had a roaring fireplace which helped dry a lot of socks and shoes.
Returning to Athens, we stopped to pay tribute at Thermopylae where Leonidas and the Spartans fought the Persians under Xerces in 480 BC. “ The Persian army, alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered over one million, but today considered to have been much smaller (various figures are given by scholars, ranging between about 100,000 and 150,000) arrived at the pass in late August or early September. The vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days (including three of battle) before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history’s most famous last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path used by shepherds. It led the Persians behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware that his force was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of the Greek army and remained to guard their retreat with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians, fighting to the death.” (Wiki)
Saturday was all about Athens, specifically the suburb of Paiania. We began with a tour of Liberto’s two gardens, the first (unirrigated) at the lovely, peach-pink stucco summer home owned by his Chicago Uncle Sam Sianis, aka the ‘goat garden’. By the time summer rolls around, they can park their car on top of Liberto’s clever spring-bulbs-and-annuals meadow, left, which by then has finished flowering.
And why is it called the goat garden? Well, in what might be the most powerful goat-related story in major league sports, it was a Sianis family billy goat that evidently put a curse on Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs for 71 years, from October 6, 1945 (game 4 of the World Series that year) to November 2, 2016, when the curse was finally broken and the Cubs won the title. Turns out if you don’t ‘let the goat in’ all kinds of bad baseball karma is going to come raining down on you. It would take me the rest of my blog to tell you the story of the billy goat curse, so rather than explain it as Liberto is doing to folks on the trip, below….
Anybody who has run out of space in which to grow plants knows how wonderful it would be to be able to adopt an empty garden. Since his relatives are only in residence for their vacation each summer, Liberto has been free to create gardens around the house to grow his favourite plants for his mail order seed business. But I’m pretty sure the family feels lucky to be surrounded by such beauty each summer.
I especially loved these silver beauties, moon carrot, Seseli gummiferum, top and partridge feather, Tanacetum densum, below.
We were all able to sniff an aromatic leaf of sideritis, used to make traditional Greek mountain tea.
Spring would be truly lovely in this garden, but I was able to find a few flowers in bloom in November, below. Top row, from left: Eriocephalus africanus, Crocus speciosus, Salvia africana-lutea, Teucrium fruticans ‘Ouarzazate’, Bottom row, from left: Iris unguicularis, Scabiosa (Lomelosia) crenata subsp. dalaportea, Cyclamen hederifolium, Epilobium canum.
Then we headed a short distance away to Liberto’s family home and the large garden he’s made behind it: the salvia garden. Here we wandered amongst lush grasses, shrubs, small trees, citrus and many perennials from around the world, all adapted to the Mediterranean climate….
…. but especially the stars of his garden: so many different kinds of sages (Salvia species). I counted 87 taxa on his salvia seed list.
There are other plants, of course. Here are a few that caught my eye, including blue-flowered Pycnostachus urticifolia, bright red Erythrina x bidwillii, golden Tecoma stans, and some delicious-looking grapefruit.
Succulents and xeric bromeliads were displayed on a table….
…. and a small pond hosted aquatic plants.
Guests listened to Liberto explaining about his mail order business of seeds and bulbs. Those stairs lead to the production side of the garden. Let’s go up.
A series of glass cold frames holds tender bulbs from around the world. Everywhere are little pots filled with grit-rich soil and all manner of exquisite flora. It is a living library of the plant collector’s passion. To read more about what inspires him in the plant world, read this 2016 interview on Plinth. If the sun hadn’t been shining so brightly at a difficult time of day (photographers say this all the time) and if the garden hadn’t been full of wandering people, and if we didn’t have a full schedule of visits later, I would have enjoyed chronicling Liberto’s garden more closely, as I did his good friend Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden in Denver earlier in the year. But such is life.
The genus Oxalis is a special favourite; he grows more than 150 species.
Plants, plants, plants….. maybe for seeds? Plant sales? He was too busy to ask.
From this well-organized room, seeds of his favourite plants will find their way throughout the world.
Our next stop in Paiania was the Vorres Museum where Liberto has been working to transform the gardens to a more sustainable model. He joined his friend Nektarios Vorres, grandson of the founder of the museum and president of the foundation that now runs it. I wrote a blog about this lovely place with its Canadian connection.
Then it was a walk up Mount Hymettus with its view of Attica through wild olive branches heavy with fruit.
And the hillside bore seedhead reminders of the wild Greek mountain thyme (Thymbra capitata) that brings bees to nectar in order to yield the famous Hymettus honey. Fortunately, I did come home with a gift of some sweet thyme honey.
Sunday brought us to various environments in Attica: a rocky scramble overlooking the blue Aegean; a stroll along the seashore where asters were growing; then a walk through a parched, trash-strewn meadow where we found tiny bulbs growing in the dry grasses. From left, Crocus cartwrightianus (progenitor of the saffron crocus); Spiranthes spiralis, Greece’s only autumn-flowering orchid; tiny autumn squill, Prospero autumnale; and diminutive Colchicum cupanii.
Then we drove south to Cape Sounion. Before visiting the nearby temple, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh fish – calamari, sardines and bream – overlooking the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean. OCD Patients May Seek Help From Dermatologists. purchase viagra online Regular exercises levitra cialis have proved to be the shortcut to come out of the disease. It is advisable that discount viagra pharmacy should be taken at-least 30 minutes before the sexual intercourse to take place. Are you an extremely busy person and spend almost 24 hours at your office? If such is the case generic tadalafil india then you should implement the application of this medicament but only after consulting the physician.
Then it was a walk up to the beautiful Temple of Poseidon (440 BC), where I was photographed capturing a tiny specimen of yellow Sternbergia lutea in the foundation rocks.
By the time we drove back downtown, the hour was late but we were fortunate to pay a short visit to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, starting with the spectacular building….
…… then a walk down to ground level through the sprawling, night-lit gardens. Definitely a spot that merits a return.
On November 4th we drove from Athens to the Peloponnese with our first stop overlooking the Corinth Canal. It was completed in 1893 and joins the Gulf of Corinth to the north with the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea to the south, thus turning the Peloponnese Peninsula into an island. I am an armchair geology geek and to see this slab of cut limestone was a treat. It is 6.3 kilometres (4 miles) long and 70 metres (21.3 feet) wide at its base with a depth of 8 metres. The 63-metre deep (206 feet) deep limestone and earthen walls are actually the canal’s weak point, since they are affected by water from tides and boat wash and the occasional earthquake, leading to frequent landslides and long closures (4 years in the 1920s) to clean out rock and earth. Without the canal, the 11,000 ships (the largest width is 58 feet) that make the trip through it annually would need to travel an additional 300 nautical miles to reach their destination.
A long day of travel with rain and darkness at its end held a bright spot, and one of my favourite places on the tour. For who wouldn’t love a hillside overlooking olive fields dotted with wild heather (Erica manipuliflora), its botanical name commemorating its home on the Mani Peninsula. And there were bees and beehives, too; a few days later, a little lost in Athens while walking home by myself from the Acropolis, I bought a jar of heather honey to help me remember this place.
The next morning, from the beach in front of our pretty little stone hotel in Gytheion on the eastern shore of the Mani Peninsula, I looked out over the Lakonian Gulf, somewhat reluctantly climbing into the van to head to the western side of the peninsula. Our hotels were so pretty, and the days all started early.
During a brief stop to scour a steep cliff on the road out of Gytheion, Liberto met a group of French botanists and exchanged the latest in plant spotting. Only in Greece.
Less than an hour later, we were pulled over on a farm road between olive groves, where the harvest was taking place…..
…. and we happily photographed, from left, Allium callimischon ssp.callimischon, Colchicum psaridis and Crocus boryi.
But I especially cherish the memory here of the goat bells or kypria, a little musical interlude I followed down the road until the shepherd’s dogs let me know I’d come far enough. Listen….
High on a ridge overlooking the gulf, we found a little field of the beautiful, purple Crocus goulimyi. But I was also fascinated by the valonia oaks (Quercus ithaburensis ssp. macrolepis) that line the road, and with their big, frilly acorns, which are used traditionally in tanning. From then on, I would remember the crocuses as “the ones that grew with the oaks”. Crocus goulimyi is named for Constantine Goulimis (1886-1963), a lawyer and amateur botanist who wrote Wild Flowers of Greece.
Then we drove to our lovely hotel in Areopoli in the Deep Mani Peninsula, Ktima Karageorgou, set under a massive peak of the Sagias Mountains, part of the Taygetos range.
While the others investigated the mountain I played hooky and took a very chilly swim. Before dinner, we enjoyed a slide presentation of Greek bulbs and flora by Liberto.
The next morning, November 6th, we drove south on the peninsula and within the hour came to an enchanting meadow filled with Crocus niveus in a mix of white and pale purple forms. And there was lovely Cyclamen graecum here, too, near the silvery leaves of Astragalus lusitanicus.
Driving further south, we visited a ‘ghost village’ called Vathia, a collection of stone towers from the 18th and 19th centuries, each built by a Maniot family to act not merely as a home but as a defensive fortress against their neighbours. During the early 19th century when the population numbered roughly 300, poverty forced many of the inhabitants to abandon their rural life and move to the cities.
Today, a few of the towers seem to be inhabited – I saw a satellite dish and curtains on one. But most are still in ruin and likely not economic to renovate in this location. An evocative stop.
We were nearing the bottom of the peninsula when we made another stop along the road to botanize. The slopes of the mountains are etched with hundreds of stone-walled terraces. That was the way of agriculture here, a very hard life, now mostly abandoned. In the field we saw lots of painted lady butterflies nectaring on yellow fleabane (Dittrichia viscosa) and Liberto gave me a handful of fragrant Greek sage (Salvia fruticosa), another herb used to make traditional tea
We reached our destination at the bottom of the Deep Mani: Cape Tainaro (Tainaron, Matapan), the southernmost point of mainland Greece and a beautiful place to spend the next few hours. Here were the strange remains of the Sanctuary and Death Oracle of Poseidon Tainarios, top below, presumably at one time a place to present offerings to forestall death by misadventure on the ocean.
I found a few tiny fall bulbs (Prospero autumnale and Colchicum parlatoris) and fennel in the grasses here, along with abundant verbascum seedheads and Crithmum maritimum by the sea.
While others took the long hike to the lighthouse at the point, I decided to stay behind and dip my toes into the ocean at exactly the point where the Aegean Sea meets the Ionian Sea. If you want to see what I saw there, wading in the sea near the fishboats at Cape Tainaro, you might want to watch my musical video of the beautiful rivers and seashores I saw in Greece. It’s not long, and there’s a nice little splash from time to time.
This was also the afternoon when I lost my cellphone. After fruitless searches of the van and my room, I felt a little despondent as I’d used it for so much photography. But a late night email from my husband in Canada to Liberto revealed that a tech-savvy woman in the village had found it sitting on the stone wall we had last visited to look for crocuses and found my contact information. We would visit her business the next morning on our way out of town to pick it up. When I tried to give her more than a gift of honey, she refused. “Hospitality!” she exclaimed. Indeed, hospitality.
That night in Areopoli the group had a post-dinner Greek dance lesson. It was a great success. There might have been some ouzo involved….. I might have bought the bottle…. I might have been pouring shots for the group….
On November 7th, we made our way from the dry Lakonian part of the Mani Peninsula to the Messinian Mani. Our bulb wish list for this area included Crocus boryi with its white stigmas, and we were not disappointed.
We also found the very first poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria) of the season. Not the fields of red and purple poppies we’d seen in Liberto’s early spring photos, but still……
Fifteen minutes later we were walking atop limestone on the beach at St. Nicholas. On it grew yellow-flowered rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum), which Liberto said is preserved in Greece as a pickle called “kritamo”.
A walk to a little vacant lot brought us some good specimens of the tiny autumn daffodil Narcissus obsoletus (syn. N. serotinus), left. And we saw the beginning growth of the spectacular bulb Drimia numidica (Urginia maritima) whose seedhead I’d photographed with a snail aboard in Areopoli.
Our hotel was in Kardamyli, with balconies open to the sound of waves crashing on the beach below. The Kalamitsi Hotel might have been the place where most of us would have chosen to stay for a week of sheer relaxation and reading (no botanizing). My little video gives you a flavour of this part of the Peloponnese with its rugged mountains.
Our final day of botanizing took us over the Taygetos Mountain range. I’m not sure I’ve rhapsodized enough about the mountain scenery in Greece. But this view of the northern gorges en route to Kalamata gives you a sense of the majesty of these peaks.
And, of course, there was flora. Our goal here was the autumn-flowering snowdrop (Galanthus reginae-olgae), and we were not disappointed – finding it clinging to small shelves of vegetation on damp cliff faces alongside the road, below. There were also tall plane trees (Platanus orientalis) growing up from the valley floor and goats climbing the rocky mountainsides. And the most cool purple striations in parts of the rock.
Soon we were sitting at lunch in Kalamata saying our final thank-yous to Liberto. He would be taking a group of Californians to Chile a few days later followed by botanizing in the Argentine Andes and a visit to Rio de Janiero. So the botanical part of our time in Greece was coming to an end.
But we had one more beautiful stop as the sun set near Athens – a rocky hillside spangled with golden Sternbergia lutea.
Most of us chose to add four days to the trip in order to visit some of Greece’s most famous antiquity sites with Archaeology Professor Stavros Oikonomidis of Arcadia University. And, of course, there was always something notable from the world of flora… like the iconic bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) at the Greek agora in Athens…..
…. and the storied olive tree near the Eractheion atop the Acropolis.
These beautiful cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens) were growing at the monastery at Kaisariani on Mount Hymettus.
The view from Mycenae over the 3500-year-old ruins down onto the olive groves (and the fragrance as the olives were being harvested) was unforgettable. Ephedra distachya was bearing its red fruit, and I adored the tiny, perfect rock garden I found there with Cyclamen graecum emerging from a crevice in the outcrop.
And finally, Delphi. This is the place every visitor to Greece should see: a living. breathing link to a past culture devoted to the gods of mythology – Apollo and Athena – and home to the sanctuary of the Oracle of Delphi and the high priestess Pythia (a series of priestesses through the centuries). You can read more about Delphi online, but as we walked up the sacred way past the temples and monuments and limestone walls inscribed with the names of the rich and powerful who visited more than two millennia ago, I caught a little glimpse of purple. These days, you can call on an oracle quite quickly (provided you pay your roaming fees) without any need for a pythia getting involved. The answer came back before I’d walked back down the path: “!! Campanula topaliana subsp. delphica. They flower in spring. ” Somehow, on my very last day touring Greece, to find an endemic blooming out of season and so specific to this place of mythology…
…. especially since I have an entire dining room of botanical prints solely of campanulas from Flora Danica to Sowerby’s to Mrs. Loudon, etc…… it just seemed the perfect finale.
Thus ended our tour of Greece and its autumn flora and antiquities. We had checked off a good percentage of the plant list we were given at the start of the trip. But we saw and experienced so much more. Efharisto, Liberto. (That would make a great puzzle word…) Many thanks for showing us your beautiful country.
*******
And finally, a little epilogue. Man does not live by flora alone, of course. There is also music – a word that, after all, originates with the Greek word “mousikē” for “art of the muses”. Before I left for Greece, Liberto invited me to come out with him and his friends Maria and Natalia in Athens to see a favourite band from Crete. It was such a fun evening and the band was still playing when I headed back to the hotel at 3 am, mindful of my 6 am alarm(!) I was very moved by the music of Giorgis and Nikos Stratakis — Γιώργος & Νίκος Στρατάκης — and their band (music which seemed to share some Celtic rhythms with my own ancestry, especially the tsampouna or bagpipes). But I simply cannot imagine any North American band playing their own version of several verses of a 17th century romantic poem (Erotokritos from Cretefrom 1 to 6:28 min) and everyone in the audience knowing the chorus and singing it with great passion. That is most definitely the Greek spirit… or, perhaps, that elusive Greek quality ‘filotimo‘. Here is a little taste, courtesy of my video, of An Autumn Night in Athens.
Happiest of holidays to all my friends out there. Kαλές διακοπές! I’ll be back in the new year with more gardens.
As part of a botanical tour of Greece this autumn, led by Eleftherios Dariotis for the North American Rock Garden Society, I had the most magical visit to the saffron fields of the west Macedonia province in the small town of Krokos. If you photograph flower bulbs, as I do, the saffron crocus is a kind of holy grail – historic, culturally rich, with a mellow yellow whiff of mystery and romance. So it was a very special morning, followed by a saffron-themed lunch in Kozani three miles away. Our tour started in the town of Krokos (yes, that’s Greek for “crocus”) at the Kozani Saffron Producers Cooperative, called the Cooperative de Safran, below. Founded in 1971, it has 2,000 members from 41 villages in the area. According to Greek law, the Cooperative holds the exclusive rights to the collection, distribution and packaging of Greek saffron under the name ‘Krokos Kozanis’.
Outside the building, I saw my very first saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) in a weedy little bed in front of the building. Note the three very long scarlet stigmas (or as the Greek say, stigmata). The saffron crocus is not actually found in nature, but is an “autotriploid” version of its endemic progenitor Crocus cartwrightianus, which I’ll explain more about below.
Along the raised driveway behind the building, the murals celebrated this plant of antiquity…..
….. and the people who strain their backs to pick the flowers and harvest the stigmas from late October into early November (we visited on Halloween day) …..
…. and those who work with the stigmas once they’re dried and ready to become the saffron of our kitchen herbal.
In the building, we passed a room with a group of women at work weighing and packaging the tiny threads of saffron.
Depending on whose data you read, it takes between 85,000 and 150,000 flowers with their three stigmas to make 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of saffron. This has led to saffron being called “red gold”. In fact it was traditionally measured with the same types of scales used to measure gold.. I bought a few 2 gram packages from the Cooperative for €4.50 each, which I think was a very good price for top quality saffron. And given that there appears to be a lot of counterfeit saffron in powder form out there (usually with a little actual saffron supplemented with dyed filler), it’s important to buy your saffron from approved sources.
We listened to a presentation in Greek by the director of the cooperative, translated by Eleftherios.
Then we toured the product packaging area downstairs. I won’t even attempt to calculate what a tin like this filled with saffron threads would cost. But it would make a lot of risotto! There was a drying room, machines that did goodness-knows-what and big cartons addressed to places in the U.S. all ready to be shipped.
Finally it was time to drive out to the fields, the “Krokohória”. The harvesting season was in full swing, with purple flowers dotting bare soil in field after field along the roads.
The saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, below, is not known in nature. Recent genotyping-by-sequencing has determined that it is likely (99.3%) an ancient hybrid of…..
….. two different genotypes (autotriploid) of a wild Crocus cartwrightianus population south of Athens. During our tour I photographed this species, below, en route from Athens to Cape Sounion at the most southerly tip of Greece.
Like all crocuses, saffron crocus grows from a “corm”, not a bulb. But unlike all other crocuses which can be pollinated and make seed, its triploid nature means that it is sterile, therefore all new plants must come from offsets of mature corms.
Each patch had a few pickers bent over plucking flowers to place in their buckets. If this isn’t the most backbreaking work in all agriculture, I don’t know what is.
But it is an ancient practice, one that we know reaches back in Greece 3,500 years. We can be that specific because of the great preservative power of volcanic ash. If you visit the museum on the island of Santorini (Thera), as I did eight years ago, you can see fragments of wall frescoes, below, found buried under layers of the ash that descended on the Minoan Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri during a massive, multi-stage volcanic eruption in roughly 1600 BC.
Though no human remains were discovered, leading researchers to conclude that the inhabitants fled a few months earlier during preliminary volcanic activity, the deep layer of tephra, which includes the thick, silvery pumice layer you can see in the upper part of my photo, below (I was on the deck of a ship which was floating on sea water at the surface of the caldera that formed during the resultant collapse of the volcano)…..
…… created a kind of Bronze Age museum, similar to Pompeii. And because of that, we know that the young Minoan woman below was doing exactly what…..
We were introduced to a husband-and-wife team of crocus pickers who agreed to be our interpretive guides. Their sweet dog kept them company. Look at the woman’s hands; saffron is also an ancient dye.
The man dug up a clump of crocuses to show us how the corms form offsets, gradually forming large clumps. In time, these are dug up, the older corms discarded and the younger corms replanted.
We saw their basket of newly-picked flowers. The stigmas must be harvested quickly to avoid deterioration in quality.
Then the woman pressed into our hands little piles of silky purple flowers.
We inhaled the light, enigmatic fragrance. Saffron absolute is an ingredient in many perfumes, including those by Bella Bellissima (Royal Saffron), Donna Karan (Black Cashmere), Giorgia Armani (Idole d’Armani), Givenchy (Ange ou Demon) and Lady Gaga (Fame), among others. Saffron was also said to be an aphrodisiac. According to an article in National Geographic about Iran’s saffron industry, “Cleopatra was said to bathe in saffron-infused mare’s milk before seeing a suitor”. (Please don’t try this at home. I’ve heard it doesn’t work with low-fat cow’s milk and I have no idea what would clean saffron from enamel.)
The crocus pickers’ dog was getting a little bored….
….. but our Greek guide Eleftherios was happy. We had hit the harvest timing perfectly!
Because I’ve been known to photograph a few honey bees in my time, I then looked around to see what I could find in the crocuses. There was one riding a stigma with great style (sorry, bad botanical pun)…..
…… and two rolling in the golden pollen. Like all crocuses, C. sativus produces lots of protein-rich pollen for bees, even though the flowers are sterile.
We walked down the road to see other pickers working their fields.
Discarded crocus tepals lay in piles at the edges of the fields, the end product of the morning’s harvest of saffron threads. What a wonderful visit we had.
Then it was on to the large town of Kozani where we sat down for a multi-course lunch, all saffron-themed. There was a saffron-infused chicken soup….
…… and a sweet (secret recipe) saffron sauce for grilled Greek cheeses….
….. and saffron chicken…..
….. followed by risotto, then saffron ice cream. All with wine. The Greeks do know how to do “lunch”.
It was the perfect way to finish our saffron adventure, to embroider our growing canvas of autumn-flowering Greek bulbs with these intricate, beautiful scarlet threads.
