A riot of glorious wildflowers

By Martin Clark

After this wet winter, it has finally been warming up here in Cyprus and this is the signal for wildflowers to begin blooming.

Cyprus is famous for its orchids, that mimic insects to attract pollinators, even though many have no nectar to offer. They imitate the female of a wasp or bee to attract males and also give off subtle vanilla-like scents. Such complex mimicry makes you wonder at the power of evolutionary chance!

Up around the villages of Pano and Kato Lefkara and Kato Drys, many eco-tourists come just to see and photograph these orchids; an especially large number come from Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

The habit of German-speaking people getting involved in orchid hunting is no recent thing. The Cyprus bee orchid (Ophrys kotschyi) is named after the Austrian botanist Theodore Kotschy (1813 -1866) who hunted orchids in Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Cyprus. It’s the only orchid found in Cyprus that is endemic and found in no other country in the world.

As well as the limestone area around Lefkara and Kato Drys, Akrotiri near Limassol is a great place to find orchids.

There are an unbelievable number of orchids in Cyprus: 46 different species with new discoveries every few years. Not all orchids are rare, the easiest to find are the giant orchid (Barlia robertiana), and the pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis). Orchids should not be picked although the villagers in the past certainly did pick them to decorate the house at Easter; these two varieties are very common, but even so, you must not pick them!

When you move from fields, olive groves and hedgerows to forests with pine trees, the orchids change. My favourite conifer forest orchid is the Roman orchid (Dactylorhiza romana), creamy to light yellow coloured and often in a large group, they look spectacular in the sun’s rays coming through the forest canopy; they’re common in Akamas but I find them in the Machairas mountains near Vavatsinia.

I first thought they were mixed with Anatoliian orchids (Orchis anatolica), but apparently the two colours are the same species and are often see growing together. These orchid varieties are easy to confuse with the lesser butterfly, green winged and loose flowered orchids. Whenever I go orchid hunting with my Sri Lankan friend Piyal, we end up talking about the wonderful blooms in his country and especially in the public park in Candy; he knows it well and I visited once.

Of course there are many other beautiful spring flowers; just starting to bloom now is the wild gladioli (Gladiolus italicus), which villagers associate with Easter time and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ, calling the flowers ‘anastasi’, literally ‘resurrection’.

Another spectacular flower to be seen about now is the Anemone (Anemone coronaria). Sometimes the delicate blossoms are in several shades from white, through pink to purple… they literally take my breath away. Found in many places, some beauties around Tochni. The name anemone comes from the Greek word for ‘windflower’. According to mythology, the anemone sprang from Aphrodite’s tears as she mourned the death of Adonis. Thought to bring luck and protect against evil, legend has it that when the anemone closes its petals, it’s going to rain.

Staying with folklore, appearing now and easy to spot is the purple flowered mandrake (Mandragora officinarum). The plant is/was an aphrodisiac, believed to have certain magical powers with its root thought to be in the power of dark earth spirits. It was believed that the mandrake could be safely uprooted only in the moonlight, after appropriate prayer and ritual, by a black dog attached to the plant by a cord. Human hands were not to come in contact with the plant. In medieval times it was said that as the mandrake was pulled from the ground, it uttered a shriek that killed or drove mad those who didn’t block their ears against it. After the plant had been safely uprooted. it could be used for beneficent purposes, such as healing, inducing love, facilitating pregnancy and providing soothing sleep. Mandrake is still used in homeopathic and folk medicine as well as having applications in modern witchcraft. But take care, Lyghia Nicolaou of Kato Drys remembers her brother as a child being badly poisoned by the small melon like fruit. Apparently the village name is ‘Bibonouthkia’ (little melons).

The beautiful wildflowers of Cyprus are there for all of us to enjoy and with modern cameras, it’s quite easy to get beautiful pictures. Why not have a go at some collecting? Not the blooms themselves, of course, but a picture of those you find and then research them on the internet. You’re sure to find out something really interesting!

Martin Clark (a professional forester and land manager) is director of Grampus Heritage & Training, the UK’s most successful EU wide vocational training organisation, with 26 years’ experience