Introduction

Greece is renowned for its wildflowers, with the richest diversity of any country in Europe.This is due in part to its diversity of landscapes, from mountain peaks to grassy plains to salt marsh and coastlines; in part to its geographical position at the confluence of Asia and Europe, and in part to the isolation of its various regions and islands, which has resulted in great numbers of endemic plant populations.

In its aggregate, the abundance of Greece’s flowering plant life is spectacular. Yet, summer visitors to many of the small islands of the Cyclades would be incredulous at such a claim. The landscape is pure phrygana. That is, during the hot, dry months it is a brown and sere expanse of low dusty scrub. No trees provide vertical accents, and only low mounds of prickly bushes cover the thin, rocky soil. Virtually nothing appears to be alive, as even perennial plants shield themselves from the fierce sun and wind by shriveling into a deep dormancy.

This dearth seems particularly acute on the smaller and drier islands of the Cyclades, such as the one that is the subject of this study, Kythnos. The casual visitor would assume that the flowers to be found on any particular hillside could be counted on fingers and toes. At least, that was my assumption during a 30-year acquaintance with one such hillside, which I saw only during summer vacations. It was an assumption that has proved to be spectacularly wrong.

In 1972, my husband and I bought Gastromeni, a 9-hectare coastal site on the western side of Kythnos, midway from the port of Merihas to the island’s southern tip. We spent summers there, until our retirement from university positions in the United States and relocation to Greece year-round in 2001. That winter was my first experience of the hillside in bloom. The transformation was totally unexpected. The first rains washed off the dust, deepened the soil color to a rich copper, and brought a flush of bright green to the prickly bushes.

When a clump of daffodils sprang up in January just outside my door, I thought one of our island friends must have planted the bulbs there. Then I noticed the clumps all over the hillside.

With no botanical training—not even the most casual knowledge of wildflowers – I believed when I saw my first tiny orchid in February that I’d discovered something extremely rare. How could such an exotic flower as an orchid be blooming on Kythnos? So I bought a few reference books and learned that my "exotic flower" is common throughout the Greek countryside, one of a host of little orchids with the Latin name ophrys.

February also brought a carpet of crocuses to the path leading from the sea to our house. They covered the ground almost as densely as pebbles on the beach. Astounded, I broke out my camera and began clicking photos of each new bloom that I discovered. A photographer by profession, I had thought that in my 30 years of vacationing here, I had already photographed everything that possibly could be photographed, and had brought my equipment along just for family snapshots.

Over the next half-dozen years, camera in hand, I explored my hillside in earnest and in all seasons, and amassed an archive of flower images. Reference books in hand, I tried to name the various species, a daunting task for a rank amateur, especially when I encountered notations such as “and 62 similar species”! Many of my identifications are tentative. But while I may not know the precise species, I can usually place a flower in the correct family, often in the right genus, and sometimes confidently in the proper species. That is, I can tell a pea-family flower when I see it, though I cannot readily distinguish lathyrus from vicia. However, a pink butterfly orchid is unmistakable for anything else. (It took me hours of fruitless leafing through the most authoritative field guides, those of Olaf Polunin, before I realized that his thick guides describe only a fraction of the 6,000 species of the Balkan region, and that perhaps the particular flower I was looking at simply wasn’t in the book.)

While attempts at precise identification intrigue me, I do not claim the status of even an amateur at botany, and I remain first and foremost a photographer. My fascination is with the lovely forms and colors and textures of my subjects; my concern is to produce a good composition rather than a maximum of identifying characteristics. That being the case, I find much to hold my attention even after the brilliant flush of springtime has completely given way to a uniformly dust-colored hillside in summer. Pea family plants shed their blooms and grow intricately shaped pods. Close inspection of the common puff heads of dandelion-like plants reveals amazing variety. I am far more intrigued with the seed-head and twisty dried leaves of salsify than with its colorful blooms. 

The number of species I have photographed on my hillside is closing in on 200. While I find it harder and harder to find something new to identify, I still thrill at photographing the infinite variety of forms and textures and shapes. Herein, I offer an essay on the seasonal variety on my hillside, a selection of my favorite flowers in mini portfolios, and an archive of all the different species I have encountered.

Kathleen A. Saccopoulos