The Seasons
Sea squills are the first to bloom in autumn.
Aromatic inula, an intriguing rather than beautiful plant, appears along roadsides.
The autumn crocus, crocus tournifortii, begins to bloom in late October, and by mid-November, it pops up everywhere.
Rare double bloom on autumn crocus.
This large mandrake thrives just outside the garden wall, behind the kitchen.
The pink butterfly orchid, finally found on my side of the stone walls of Trivlaka Bay after an 8-year search.
My first foray into identifica-tion was this common Virginia stock: Malcolmia maritima.
The fritillary that grows on my land is called in Greek "Tears of the Virgin."
Field gladiolas and tiny lark-spurs appear in late spring.
The delicate Chinese lantern of the tiny thistle, Atractylis cancellata.
Late August on Kythnos, as on most of the Cycladic Islands, is a time of deep dormancy for nearly all wild plant life. Nothing appears alive. The color palette is limited to a narrow range of browns and grays; heat haze radiates up to pale the blue sky.
Even before the first rains of autumn, however, life begins to stir on the hillside. With no readily apparent trigger, sea squills poke pointed snouts out of the hard-packed ground. Within days, the stalks have snaked up to a half-meter’s height and begun to open their buds into star-shaped blooms. There are no leaves as yet, only the sinuous stalks, topped with a luminous bottle brush of white petals striped in pink, swaying in the breeze.
Another strange plant makes its appearance at the beginning of autumn, again without the impetus of rain. This is aromatic inula, sprouting all along the roadside, and even smack in the middle of the dirt road. It is often (not always) a pyramid of dusty green that looks like a miniature Christmas tree from a distance. The whole plant is sticky, which is why it is covered with dust, and it smells strongly of camphor. Small, nodding dandelion-like flowers soon give way to miniature puffballs. It is an intriguing rather than a beautiful plant.
The true harbinger of autumn, however, is a meltingly beautiful flower. Throughout Greece, crocuses light up the landscape after the first rains come, and there are a myriad of species. The one that has colonized my hillside is crocus tournifortii, a lavender bowl with coral-colored, frilly stamens spilling over the side. The petals’ hue can range from the palest mauve to nearly purple. Not only are they lovely to photograph in their prime, but, as the petals fade, they wither into translucent twists of transcendent beauty. After five years of photographing these flowers, I thought I had finally exhausted the possibilities. Then, a rare double bloom appeared in the middle of a patch of bouzi (Hottentot fig) right beside our house.
After the first autumn rain, the hillside is transformed. The dry, thorny bushes green up rapidly. Although the sea squills’ inflorescence quickly withers into dry stalks of seed pods, their huge bulbs push out huge rosettes of fleshy forest-green leaves. Their abundance is astounding. Apparently, nothing eats them; their only predator is man, who also doesn’t eat them, but digs them up, encases the bulbs in foil, loops a red ribbon around the strappy leaves, and hangs them from doorways on New Year’s Day as a symbol of rebirth.
The hummocks of the cushion shrubs flush green but also, the ground beneath them takes on this color of resurgent life. Patches of heart-shaped leaves shelter the cowled heads of jack-in-the-pulpits, while fringed leaves herald the anemones to come in a few weeks, and delicate rosettes of pale green announce the future sites of the tiny bee orchids.
Sword leaves shoot up next, and in the New Year, daffodils dot the landscape. Hidden against stone walls, the thickly-ribbed leaves of the mandrake plant spread out, forming a large plate centered with the soft purple of the mandrake’s flowers. I had thought these plants to be somewhat rare, but I have spotted more than two dozen on my walks across the hillside, as well as two that regularly appear near the house.
As winter advances, the hillside turns golden, as the several varieties of thorny shrubs, most in the pea family, are frosted with yellow flowers. By late February, the asphodels have begun to send up their spikes topped with creamy pink blooms, and the sprint to spring has begun.
Most spectacular, although easily overlooked without a diligent search, are the several species of bee orchids, most no bigger than a fingernail, that thrive on my hillside. Their Latin name is ophrys, and the degree to which they mimic the shapes of bees is amazing. The smallest one, the bumblebee orchid, ophrys bombyliflora, is the first to emerge, usually in late February. Next come the yellow bee, a pink and deep mauve one, the multi-colored ophrys tenthredinifera, and the appropriately named somber bee.
The bloom time for these small beauties is short, and they can be spotted only at close range. While not rare, they are very local, occurring in small patches. I have discovered so many of them only because their season is also a good time for hiking the hillside (cool enough for wearing long, thick trousers and boots as protection from the thorny bushes), and I have spent innumerable afternoons criss-crossing the slopes. My search is not over, even after several years, because I am convinced that one particular orchid, the pink butterfly, must exist somewhere on my land. I have found it growing just over the stone wall to the north, as well as on the hump of land to the south. Thus far, however, I have not spotted it on Gastromeni itself. UPDATE: finally, I discovered one on March 17, 2011 on a slope just inside our gate. And although I searched nearby, there was only the one plant.
By March, plants are blooming everywhere. (View an album of everything in bloom on the Ideas of March.) Down by the sea are drifts of a four-petalled flower that first sent me on a search for identification. Four petals, I soon discovered, point to the cress family, but I had neglected to note anything about the rest of the plant, such as leaf shape or seed pods. Color was no help, for my specimens ranged from white to mauve to pink, all in the same cluster. After much dithering, I decided these were malcolmia maritima, a kind of common Virginia stock. A later, more careful examination seemed to confirm this, but I decided I could save myself much time and frustration by more complete observation of my subjects.
The flowers of pea family plants all look very similar, differing in color and size, mainly, but otherwise distinctive enough for easy placement within the leguminosae (now called fabaceae) family. The best indicator of species is the pod, but many times, the field guides don't bother to mention this fact. Clovers are included in the pea family, and several species are among my favorites, including the Christmas-tree ornaments of the star clover, and the tiny hop trefoil, which is supposed to be yellow, but on my land can sometimes be a pale cream edged in red, looking like a miniature rose. Other stand-outs are fritillaries, somewhat like drooping tulips. The one that blooms profusely on Gastromeni is a deep reddish-purple with golden stamens. In Greek, its name is Dakry tis Panayias, "Tears of the Virgin." (I had trouble pinpointing this species, because, as I belatedly discovered, it is not listed in the usual guides. Only when George Sfikas, the doyen of Greece wildflowers, published a new guide did I discover that my little fritillary is not fritillaria obliqua, as I had thought, but fritillaria tuntasia, and it occurs only on Kythnos, Seriphos and Syros.) Wind flowers wave over the hillside in a flush of pink and mauve, and the spikes of the asphodels sparkle in the evening sunset. Much less conspicuous is the delicate love-in-a-mist, a little, pale trumpet wreathed in greenery.
Two intricate flowers that appear in late spring are a small larkspur and a field gladiola, both very similar to cultivated garden varieties, but on a much smaller scale. The mauve of thyme bushes take over when the yellow gorse bushes fade. By June, however, the parade is nearly at an end. The jeweled colors wink out, and earth tones of rust and ochre and dusty gray-green take over.
In place of color, summer offers the intrigues of shape and texture. Pea family flowers are spent, but the plants sprout seed cases of amazing variety, from the familiar pods resembling the edible vegetable to spiral disks to intricate scribbles. A delicate little thistle called atractylis cancellata loses its puffball of a seedhead, but the bracts that encased it remain like a tiny Chinese lantern. The fritillary loses its petals and then the center of the blossom begins to enlarge until it is like a tiny pumpkin on the stalk.
There are dozens of dandelion look-alikes, and after the plants lose their petals, they all open seed heads with fluffy, white puffs, but some are soft and feathery, and others are as stiff as straw. Salsify seed heads are enormous, with each seed appended by a filmy parachute, while the seed heads of the dandelon-like hymenomena graecum are sharply delinated, as if with an ink pen.
In short, at least for this photographer, summer's charms rival those of the other seasons, providing ample opportunities on every single day of the year for creative endeavors with the camera.