Eco Hvar

Hvar's Wildflower Treasures

Published in Environment

The wildflowers on Hvar are a year-round joy. Even in the depths of winter, there is hardly a week without colours brightening up the countryside, contrasting with the island's rocks and the variegated dark green of the woodlands. 

Hvar's Wildflower Treasures

When they are not flowering, the wild plants die back or merge into the background, coming to life again to mark the seasons with their colourful contribution. There is no end to the pleasure of walking around the fields and woodlands, looking at the endless range of plants, many of them tiny, which contribute in turn to the natural splendour of the island. The varied shapes of the plants are part of the attraction, and each season has some specially interesting specimens. These are two examples from the spring season.

The tassel hyacinth

In spring from April to June the tassel hyacinths come into their own with their very fine purple heads.

 
The tassel hyacinth (leopoldia comosa or muscari comosum) is one of the species known as grape hyacinths, and is sometimes called tufted grape hyacinth, hairy muscari or edible muscari. It has fertile flowers which are brownish-green, bell-shaped, and held outwards on stalks which are roughly the same length as the flowers themselves, or slightly longer. At the top of the plant a tuft of bright purple sterile flowers on long stalks spreads upwards. It belongs to the Asteraceae family in the Asparagales order.

As one of the synonyms suggests, the tassel hyacinth is edible, and is used for food mainly in Italy and Greece. In Italy tassel hyacinth bulbs are called lampascioni or cipolline selvatiche (little wild onions), in Greece they are volvoi. I have not yet met anyone who eats tassel hyacinth bulbs in Dalmatia, probably because they are bitter tasting and most Dalmatians seem to be addicted to sugar nowadays. The bulbs are boiled and then preserved in oil or pickled, and are considered to be an appetite stimulant, as well as being diuretic. In Greece they are traditionally part of the speciality vegetarian foods eaten during Lent. Reading the descriptions of how they are prepared, it all sounds like tricky hard work, so I shall content myself, at least for the time being, with simply admiring the beautiful flowers when they spread over the fields in springtime.

The tragopogon

I was fascinated for years by the exquisite round feathery seedhead which would suddenly spread all around the countryside in springtime. Finding out what it was proved to be a challenge. People used to tell me that it was a type of dandelion, but that didn't seem to fit the bill. I had never seen the plant in flower. So far as I could see it consisted only of a stem with a slim head of spindles (seen to the front left of the picture below) which opened out to form the magnificent globe of the seedhead.

I was resigned to never finding out. After all, its beauty was not affected by my not knowing its name. And as I am very bad at remembering names anyway, perhaps it was not worth while searching. Then I made a chance visit to Marinka Radež's art atelier in Dol, and happened to see a painting in progress of the very plant. And not just the seedhead which had entranced me for all those years, but there was also a flower which I had not been aware of. It turned out that the flower only comes out for a short while during the day. Either I had not recognised it as being on the same plant, or I had always missed it. Marinka did not know what the plant was called, but I had enough clues to narrow my search, and finally tracked it down through an excellent website called the seedsite.

Tragopogon flower, April 2015. Photo Vivian Grisogono

So it was that I identified the mystery feathered spindly globe as a tragopogon. Definitely not a dandelion (taraxacum), although both belong to the Asterales order in the Asteraceae family. The tragopogon is also called salsify or goatsbeard. One member of the species, which consists of over 140 different types, the purple salsify or tragopogon porrifolius, is edible, mainly the root which apparently tastes like oysters, but also young shoots and leaves.

Tragopogon flower, April 2015. Photo Vivian Grisogono

© Vivian Grisogono 2013

Related items

back to top
You are here: Home environment articles Hvar's Wildflower Treasures

Eco Environment News feeds

  • As the UK prepares its next carbon budget, what needs to be included?

    Expert recommendations will influence plans for energy, housing, transport industry and farming for decades

    Labour will next week be confronted with stark policy choices that threaten to expose the fault lines between the Treasury and the government’s green ambitions, as advice for the UK’s next carbon budget is published.

    Plans for the energy sector, housing, transport, industry and farming will all be called into question in a sweeping set of recommendations for how the UK can meet the legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

    Continue reading...

  • These people protected US forests and lands. Their jobs have now vanished due to Trump

    Former federal employees devastated by president’s mass firings: ‘We’re at risk of losing our public lands to the billionaire agenda’

    Approximately 2,300 people have been terminated from the agencies that manage the 35m acres (14m hectares) of federal public lands in the US.

    These are our lands. They encompass national parks and forests, wilderness and marine protected areas, scenic rivers. They are home to campgrounds, river accesses, hiking trails and myriad other sites and facilities that more than 500 million people visit each year.

    Continue reading...

  • Young country diary: A sky full of geese is an awe-inspiring sight

    North Norfolk: Every morning, an endless flow of pink-footed geese passes overhead. Their comings and goings define the day

    The first thing you hear is a raucous cacophony in the distance, ebbing and flowing. Then the first small specks appear, and soon the sky is filled with a seemingly never-ending flow of geese.

    These are pink-footed geese, who migrate to north Norfolk at the start of winter along with hundreds of thousands of other geese. They come here to escape the harsh winters of Siberia, Iceland and Greenland, where they breed. Norfolk has an abundance of food compared to the Arctic: leaves, berries, seeds and crop remains.

    Continue reading...

  • Waves are getting bigger. Is the world ready?

    Southern Ocean waves are growing larger and faster, threatening coastlines. But some scientists think they could help turn the tide in the climate crisis

    In his remarkable memoir of his life chasing breaks in far-flung corners of the globe, Barbarian Days, the writer William Finnegan describes the “spooky duality” of waves, the way that, “when you are absorbed in surfing they seem alive. They each have personalities, distinct and intricate, and quickly changing moods, to which you must react in the most intuitive, almost intimate way – too many people have likened riding waves to making love. And yet waves are of course not alive, not sentient, and the lover you reach to embrace may turn murderous without warning.”

    This idea of duality is difficult to avoid when thinking about waves. In them we see energy and matter collapse into each other, find fluidity with structure and form, and the eternal in the transient, apprehend both beauty and symmetry and violence and terror. Likewise, the physics of waves are simultaneously very simple and impossibly complex, the non-linear nature of fluid dynamics meaning they can remain relatively regular or combine without warning into rogue waves capable of sweeping people off rocks and sinking ships.

    Continue reading...

  • Brazilian city in Amazon declares emergency after huge sinkholes appear

    In Buriticupu, about 1,200 people risk losing their homes, and residents have seen the problem escalate in 30 years

    Authorities in a city in the Brazilian Amazonhave declared a state of emergency after huge sinkholes opened up, threatening hundreds of homes.

    Several buildings in Buriticupu, in Maranhão state, have already been destroyed, and about 1,200 people of a population of 55,000 risk losing their homes into a widening abyss.

    Continue reading...

  • Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’

    US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety

    The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: “climate.”

    The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis, academics have said, amid Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg upon environmental regulations and clean-energy development.

    Continue reading...

  • Weather tracker: Winds batter South Africa as Storm Coral blasts parts of Med

    In Europe and large parts of the US it has been a week of plunging temperatures and heavy snow

    Severe weather hit South Africa this week, with intense thunderstorms, flooding and reported tornadoes. The South African weather service issued warnings for provinces across central and eastern parts of the country, covering the risk of torrential downpours, strong winds, hail and lightning.

    One tornado, in Pretoria North on Tuesday, damaged hundreds of homes, vehicles and buildings and uprooted trees. By the end of the week, areas in eastern South Africa may record cumulative rainfall of about 100-150mm.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘To say there’s no future is counterproductive’: metal megastars Architects on grief, climate and hope for humanity

    Consumed by anger and still mourning a brother and bandmate, the British quartet have written their masterpiece. They explain how they’re fighting self-loathing and trying to age responsibly

    In a world of low royalties and short attention spans, not many bands make it to 11 albums, much less have their 11th be their masterpiece. But over the course of 20 years, the metalquartet Architects have inched towards this milestone. The Sky, the Earth & All Between sets out its scale in its title, where gigantic pop choruses soar over hellish chasms of churning noise, resulting in the most consistently sublime British rock album of this decade. The band are now at their arena-filling, Metallica-supporting peak, adored by millions.

    “But it means nothing,” says frontman, Sam Carter. “Because you don’t believe it. If you can’t access that part of you that lets it in, then it’s pointless.” Drummer and lyricist, Dan Searle, is equally downcast. “I punish myself, I loathe myself,” he says evenly, blinking behind his glasses. “I feel like I’m shit at everything.” Across two decades, the band have been buffeted by poor mental health, creative differences and an instance of particularly traumatic grief. While the pair are quick to joke during our long conversation in a London photo studio, and are clearly ravenously ambitious, I have never met a rock band as candid about their frailties.

    Continue reading...

  • The EPA weighed two LA beachfront sites for toxic waste sorting. These ‘hippies and hicks’ revolted

    Residents in Topanga Canyon – an area of Indigenous heritage and artists – mobilized against the state’s decision to bring in hazardous materials after wildfires

    Twenty years ago, it was called Rodeo Grounds – an eclectic neighborhood of artists, musicians and surfers living in beach shacks where Topanga Canyon meets the Pacific Ocean. In a bizarre agreement with the former owner some paid as little as $100 a month for rent, raising multiple generations of their families here since the 1950s. But that was before the state purchased the property and started evicting residents in 2001. Julie Howell, who once owned Howell-Green Fine Art Gallery further up in the canyon, says the bohemians were kicked out.

    “I actually had a show in my gallery 20 years ago for the group of artists who lived there at Rodeo Grounds, who they kicked out of that spot because it was so environmentally sensitive,” says Howell.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘If not fire, we’ll be killed by hunger’: villagers continue to feel fallout from Bolivia’s worst wildfires

    Residents battle food shortages and health issues after vast areas of forest and farmland burned last year

    As she walks away from the house where she raised her family, Isabel Surubí pauses to point at the bed of a stream, now covered with dry leaves, that once supplied her entire community. “The water used to come from here,” she says.

    In 2024, wildfires in Bolivia burned more than 10m hectares (about 39,000 sq miles) of forest, farmland and savannah – an area greater than the size of Portugal. After the fires, and the drought that preceded them, the spring feeding Surubí’s village of Los Ángeles in Bolivia’s tropical dry forest ran dry.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2025 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.