GARDENS: Jane Powers unearths an Hellenic horticultural miscellany.
With the Olympic Games hoving into view, even this heretofore unsporty column has been infected with Greek fever. I've been digging around here, there and everywhere, and have unearthed the following Hellenic horticultural and floral miscellany. Sixteen little nuggets: one for each day of the games. (At the very least, they might come in useful in a pub quiz sometime in the future.)
1. Greece has more native plants than any other European country, more than 6,000 species. One thousand of these are to be found on Mount Parnes, just above the Olympic village. One in five Greek species is endemic (that is, it is found nowhere else in the world). This unusually high proportion is a result of the many mountains (covering 70 per cent of the country) and islands, where plants isolated for thousands of years develop differently and evolve into distinct species.
2. Although historically, Greece was a well-wooded country, just 19 per cent is now forested. Tree-felling, scrub clearance and millennia of grazing have led to soil erosion and the creation of a landscape of maquis, phyrgana (garigue) and steppe - with their characteristic thin and wiry vegetation.
3. The annual rainfall for Athens is 400 millimetres, about half of that for Dublin, and one-seventh of the amount that soaks parts of Connemara and Kerry. Chances are that precious little of the stuff will fall on the Olympic athletes, as rain ceases almost entirely at this time of the year. Plant growth also stops, resuming only in autumn when the rain returns.
4. Most perennials bloom in early spring: among the first to flower are irises, crocuses, fritillaries and early tulips, such as T. sylvestris. Early daffodils include the sweet-smelling Narcissus tazetta and the highly perfumed paper-white narcissus, N. papyraceus, which we in western Europe force into flower at Christmas time.
5. After the dry and quiet days of summer, a few plants such as the autumn squill and the autumn crocus burst into flower when the late rains come. The latter plant is not a crocus at all, but a distantly related species, Colchicum autumnale, which enjoys many common names, including meadow saffron, naked ladies, naked boys, and son-before-father (because the flowers appear before the leaves). It is important in science, as it produces a chemical called colchicine, which is used in plant breeding to double the number of chromosomes in cells.
6. There is no evidence that the ancient Greeks made ornamental gardens. The sun-drenched, arid and mountainous terrain provided few places with the shade and water necessary for horticulture. Groves of trees and shrubs were planted around temples and other sacred places, and on Crete, the Minoans grew plants in containers. But generally, gardening was restricted to the growing of useful crops.
7. The Greeks, however, were acutely aware of the beauty of plants, and depicted them in frescoes and on pottery. Irises, crocuses, violets and lilies (including a white one that may be the Madonna lily, Lilium candidum) are portrayed at Knossos in Crete.
8. Plants were also the basis for architectural ornamentation. The acanthus leaf was the inspiration for fifth-century B.C. Corinthian capitals, while the stems of wild angelica provided the pattern for fluted columns. The Greek columns at Smyrna, incidentally, were greatly prized by 17th-century British gardeners. In his 1659 Elysium Britannicum, John Evelyn enthused about the quality of the marble "procured from the ruines of many places in Smyrna when old columns of Antiquities being saw'd off". The hard and long-wearing material, he advised, made excellent garden rollers.
Theophrastus (circa 370-286 B.C.), a student of Aristotle, wrote An Enquiry into Plants, the western world's first systematic classification of all known plants and their medicinal applications. Around 77 A.D., Dioscorides the Greek, a surgeon who travelled with the Roman army, published his De Materia Medica, an account of about 500 Mediterranean plants and their uses. It was a standard reference book for physicians for over 1,500 years.
Greeks eat around half a kilo of vegetables a day, but many of the classic foods in their diet originated somewhere else. The olive, although domesticated in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, is a native of a more easterly region. It was first domesticated in Syria. The tomato originated in Peru, Ecuador and other parts of south America. The aubergine is from tropical Asia. And the ancestor of the courgette has been identified in Mexico in archaeological remains dating from 7000-5550 B.C.
Nonetheless, cos lettuce, with its long, crunchy leaves, is truly Greek. It comes from the Aegean island of Kos, where it was probably developed from a wild lettuce. Its arid homeland perhaps explains why it is capable of withstanding hot, dry conditions better than some other lettuces.
12. Rocket (Eruca sativa) grows wild in Greece (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean). Sow some now, and every couple of weeks until the end of September. It does best when sown directly into the soil, or into modules and then transplanted as plugs. The pungent, nutty leaves - which may be cut within about four weeks - are a source of vitamin C and iron.
Many of our garden plants are natives of Greece: among them are bulbous species such as the large snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii; the little irises, I. cretica and I. pumila; and the yellow, autumn-flowering jewel, Sternbergia lutea. Aubreita deltoidea is a native of the Aegean islands, and it has given rise to many of the garden cultivars of the purple rockery plant.
14. The triumphal laurel wreath of the ancient Greeks was made from sprigs of the native bay, Laurus nobilis. The plant was dedicated to Apollo, who according to legend was pursuing the reluctant nymph Daphne when a sympathetic deity turned her into a bay tree so that she could escape him. When Apollo realised that he was not to have his way with the maiden, he decided he'd make the tree his own instead, wearing its leaves for a crown.
Daphne was just one of many mythical figures who was transformed into a plant. The beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection became the bulb, Narcissus. The mountain nymph, Syrinx, was turned into a clump of river reeds. The blood of Adonis became the anemone, while from the blood of Hyacinthus sprang hyacinths. Drops of milk from the breast of Hera produced white lilies, while Lotis the nymph became lotus the plant, and when Dryope (who happened to be passing) picked some of its purple flowers she became another lotus. All of which makes the Greek flora rather crowded with previous incarnations.
Finally, an unexpected connection between Ireland and parts of the Mediterranean, including Greece, lies in the strawberry tree. Arbutus unedo occurs nowhere outside the Mediterranean except for Kerry, Cork and Sligo.