Geophytes in Crete

I recently returned from a 2-week trip in Crete, my first experience with a
group plant tour. Other than being stuffed into the back of a crowded van,
it was not bad, and I may take another such trip to somewhere I wouldn't
like to drive on my own. However, having seen the roads and limited traffic
in Crete, at least in the "off season," I think I could manage there in a
rental car.
Many bulbs and other geophytes were in flower. I'll post photos on the
wiki sometime soon, once I get them reduced to size and figure out the new
protocol for adding photos. Here are some field notes on what I saw and
their habitats. The terrain, though limestone, often reminded me of the
Siskiyou Mountains around the Oregon/California border. Many of the plants
discussed below grow where snow falls in winter, but the temperature is
never very cold -- olives grow up to a considerable elevation, and oranges
to 2000 feet or so.
I'm not sure whether we cover Aristolochia, but it is tuberous.
Aristolochia cretica, a species of moderate size, grows near the sea on
rocky slopes, scrambling among the spiny shrubs for which Crete is
notorious. I photographed its flowers, which are heavily lined with hairs
like those of A. chilensis, and saw the butterfly which depends on it, the
Cretan Festoon.
Another geophytic, tuberous dicot genus is Umbilicus (Crassulaceae), the
navelwort, which grows in shaded rock crevices and has rounded, glossy,
succulent leaves. Like many rock gardeners, I grow U. aizoon, a large
species, and the little U. rupestris. In Crete I saw two small ones: U.
horizontalis growing on Mt. Ida, and U. parviflorus with attractive dark
red new growth. Both should be reasonably hardy, and I've found the genus
easy from seed.
As in California, Oxalis pes-caprae is a weed found in most cultivated
areas, probably smothering more interesting things; it's said to be
resistant to herbicides, which are used a lot in the olive groves. I did
see the double form, which is attractive but probably spreads as badly as
the single -- the main method of increase being by bulblets, not seed.
One of the most exciting plants was Paeonia clusii, growing at fairly high
elevations in sparse conifer woodland, in clay with much limestone rock. It
had not yet opened its flowers but even in bud it was beautiful, the
foliage emerging dark red and deepest green. I'll certainly try to get seed
of this species.
Corydalis uniflora is a very small alpine scree plant, favoring vernally
wet sites. The foliage is glaucous and the flowers pale lavender.
Another high point was seeing masses of Cyclamen creticum in flower. This
species has white flowers of rather thin texture but otherwise resembles C.
repandum. The foliage is sometimes marked with white, but not as strikingly
as in some other species of Cyclamen. It grows in shady places, mostly
under hardwoods, and on rocky ledges, at mid elevations. It should do well
in northern California and southern Oregon, and I wouldn't hesitate to try
it outdoors here if I had enough stock to experiment with.
There were many Ranunculus species of the buttercup type, and also R.
asiaticus, the bright red ancestor of the tuberous garden Ranunculus. R.
ficaria was frequent, and in deep gorges grew R. creticus, essentially a
large version of the former. Anemone coronaria, the ancestor of tuberous
anemones of gardens, was present in all the color forms offered by the
Dutch, but these usually grew in single-color populations that seemed to
depend partly on elevation. Even more frequent was the form of A. hortensis
some authorities call A. heldreichiana, a small plant with white flowers,
blue-gray on the reverse; this grew up quite high.
Two amaryllids: Narcissus tazetta in its pretty bicolor form with deep
gold cup, growing in very moist sites such as halfway down a streambank or
among sedges in a coastal wetland. And Pancratium maritimum, deep in the
sands just inland from the beach, in leaf (the flowers emerge after the
leaves have withered).
Aroids are a conspicuous part of the vegetation. Arisarum vulgare flowered
in deeply shaded sites in good soil, often lining t he base of a boulder.
The massive Arum concinnatum grew in cultivated land, but I saw no flowers.
Also yet to bloom was the more alpine Arum idaeum -- I scrambled down the
ravine fed by the waters from the Idaean Cave hoping to find flowers in a
warm, sheltered spot, but to no avail. I did photograph flowering Arum
creticum in one of the deep gorges we hiked through; the flowers were all
white, not the yellow of the popular "F.C.C." form which I have in the bulb
frame. Dracunculus vulgaris grew in a wide variety of sites, mostly where
there was some good soil and often in old habitation sites; most of the
plants had leaves well marked with dashes of white, which was a surprise to
me since the forms I grow, from Asian sources, have plainer leaves. I'd
like to get this well-marked form. Some of the Dracunculus clumps were over
a meter tall. Finally, Zantedeschia aethiopica (Calla) has escaped from
gardens in some lowland areas.
Iridaceae: Crete has one Crocus, C. sieberi; the populations I saw were
blooming in scree just below melting snowfields, and there were leaves in
other places where the snow had recently gone. The flowers were white with
yellow throats, sometimes with a little purple on the reverse. Gladiolus
italicus was robust and colorful, often growing in great masses in
cultivated fields, where its many bulblets are distributed by the plow;
it's hardy here in Oregon. Gynandriris sisyrinchium, a little "iris" that
produces a succession of ephemeral bright lavender flowers, grew as
individuals or well-scattered colonies on fairly flat ground at mid
elevations. Hermodactylus tuberosus was flowering on rocky uplands among
grasses and dwarf shrubs, here mostly a gray color form. There were two
Iris species: I. cretensis, a close relative of I. unguicularis and hardy
in my garden, favored banks of clay and rock and reminded me of Pacific
Coast irises with its dense foliage clumps and brilliant purple and gold
flowers; and the tall bearded I. albicans, probably an ancient
introduction, lifted its white flowers in old habitation sites. The form of
Romulea bulbocodium that grows here is white, flowering right on the ground
in vernally wet rocky clay, the kind of site where you'd find Olsynium
douglasii or deciduous Lewisia species in the American West, and
Calandrinia in the Andes.
Liliaceae: Allium ampeloprasum (leek) grows wild here; the showiest onion
was A. trifolium; also seen were A. nigrum in bud, A. roseum in flower, and
A. rubrovittatum in leaf. I missed A. subhirsutum but it's flowering in my
bulb frame. Asphodeline lutea and Asphodelus aestivus are among the
commonest plants in Crete owing to the fact that they aren't eaten by the
ubiquitous sheep and goats; both are good in temperate gardens. Also
everywhere is Drimia (formerly Urginea) maritima, with big glossy green
leaves; it will flower later. A thrill was seeing Fritillaria messanensis
growing on the rocky summit of a hill near Spili; the flowers were much
more variable in their markings than what I've grown from seed, some with
prominent green median stripes. Gagea, a little-grown tulip relative, had
two yellow-flowered species, G. chrysantha and G. bohemica, and the white
G. graeca. Muscari comosum, which is dug for food (tried it, didn't like
it), is very common in fields and uplands; M. neglectum, less common; and
M. spreitzenhoferi, a dull-flowered little species, grows in beach sands. I
saw two Ornithogalums, the familiar tall O. narbonense among dense grasses
and shrubs, and miniature O. divergens in rocky flats and crevices. I was
confused when I saw colonies of what I took to be Chionodoxa, but the group
leader called Scilla nana. Grey-Wilson and Mathew's manual of the bulbs of
Europe (1981) refers to these plants as Chionodoxa cretica and C. nana, the
latter considered by some authorities "a high altitude form of C. cretica."
Whatever the current view may be, these are respectively medium-sized and
little plants with upfacing starry, light lavender, white-centered flowers;
I saw them mostly emerging from dense thornbushes where the sheep couldn't
get at them. Finally, the two or four (depending on your authority) tulips
of Crete: endemic T. saxatilis, growing on ledges of rock outcrops; endemic
T. cretica, mostly in crevices of a spectacular vertical seaside cliff and
in crevices of a black rock that I was told was a form of serpentine, but
there were outlying plants growing well in good soil and I suspect the
rocky habitat is mostly protection from rodents; T. doerfleri, sometimes
regarded as a form of T. orphanidea, in upland meadows; and T. bakeri,
which Grey-Wilson and Mathew call a dark color form of T. saxatilis,
growing especially in fields in the upland Omalos Plain where sheep and
goats had been excluded.
Since we've excluded orchids from our forum, I won't get into that, except
to mention that Crete is famous for them, there are about 50 species, we
saw 44 of them, and the Ophrys especially are very difficult to sort out.
There was a Dutch group we encountered a couple of times who were there to
look at NOTHING but the orchids. Most of the orchids are threatened by
overgrazing and particularly by fertilizer application, which is subsidized
by the EU; several former orchid sites we visited had been disked and
fertilized and had little on them but coarse pasture grass. Of course, the
island has been grazed for millennia, but new roads and pickup trucks have
probably brought many more herders to formerly little-used areas. It seems
imperative that some private organization should buy choice plant areas and
control the grazing schedule on them.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon