Eco Hvar

Poppy Death. In Memoriam

I was delighted to see my first poppy of the season two days ago, and duly recorded my pleasure yesterday morning.
Poppy Death. In Memoriam
Passing by the same spot in the evening, just as I was about to point out the stunning red of the flower against an increasingly cloudy sky to my passenger, I saw with horror that it was gone. Only some tragic-looking grey strands and the unattractive concrete, now covered with the poppy's sad relics, remained to be seen.

Local Council workers had been on the scene during the day, resolutely clearing the roadsides in advance of the major Maundy Thursday Processions in about three weeks' time. The poppy had been growing in a crack by the base of a lamp post. It was not blocking a pavement, or indeed doing anyone any harm whatsoever. Just sharing its brilliant beauty with a world which proved to be unappreciative of the gift. Why kill it? Hardly a fitting sacrifice in honour of the Processions. Evidently there are different visions of what makes Hvar beautiful. I was not alone in regretting the poppy's passing: the lady whose yard fronts on to the spot came out to tell me how much her small children had enjoyed playing round the poppy. Not much joyful play left round the withered stalks.

Other victims of the viciously wielded strimmers were the road islands which just a short time ago were brimming with wild flowers, now reduced to stony bare earth interspersed with some rather sad-looking rosemary plants, cut back like victims of some brutal military-style bullying.

Left to flourish, rosemary plants are majestic at this time of year, attracting early bees. The plants in front of Jelsa's Bagy petrol station, just outside the town, which is also a very busy tyre-fitting operation, are a prime example:

Right now, the roadside verges which are not obliterated by pesticides or unnecessary strimming are alive with an ever-increasing variety of colours.

The red poppy is the first really bright red colour to appear in springtime, standing out among the profuse whites and yellows. Poppies have been associated with largescale human sacrifice since their adoption as an emblem of the First World War in Europe. Now in the 21st century there is no need to kill them off wantonly. Natural beauty is a gift Hvar should be nurturing, not destroying in this mindless way. Maybe the sacrifice of this one plant might lead to a re-think on the part of the local authorities and their workers. What do visitors to Hvar come to see? Nature sharing its abundant gifts of colour and life? - or the dead straggling shoots left after a mindless massacre? I think it's this:

© Vivian Grisogono 2014

back to top
You are here: Home Nature Watch Poppy Death. In Memoriam

Eco Environment News feeds

  • A silent majority of the world’s people wants stronger climate action. It’s time to wake up | Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope

    About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majority

    • The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89% Project – and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more

    A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action.

    As co-founders of a non-profit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis.

    Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are the co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

    Continue reading...

  • Giant icebergs once drifted off the coast of Britain, scientists find

    Discovery could provide valuable clues as to how the climate crisis might affect Antarctica, says study

    Giant, flat-topped icebergs the size of the city of Cambridge drifted off the coast of Britain during the last ice age, according to a study that has uncovered evidence of their existence for the first time.

    A series of distinctive, comb-like grooves found preserved in sediment near Aberdeen in Scotland were left behind by the underside of huge “tabular” icebergs that dragged across the North Sea floor between 18,000 and 20,000 years ago, the researchers said.

    Continue reading...

  • Wood-burning stoves to be allowed in new homes in England despite concerns

    Campaigners condemn decision amid growing evidence of harm to health and climate from heating appliances

    Wood-burning stoves will be allowed to heat new-build homes in England despite growing evidence showing their significant contribution to air pollution and carbon emissions.

    The government is writing its future homes standard, a set of rules for developers, aimed at decarbonising England’s housing stock. Heating the UK’s 28m homes accounts for about 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.

    Continue reading...

  • Norfolk bird surveyors find Britain’s oldest known oystercatchers

    Birds in their 40s wintering on mudflats of the Wash received leg rings in early 1980s

    If your ears are assaulted by the shrill piping calls of an excitable bird on the east coast of England, fear not: it’s probably an oystercatcher experiencing a midlife crisis.

    Two of the handsome black and white birds with bright red-orange bills have been found to be the oldest known oystercatchers ever recorded in Britain, clocking up at least 41 and 43 years on the mudflats of the Wash.

    Continue reading...

  • Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

    Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic pets

    Poaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.

    The cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks.

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Thousands of honey drops on a single branch | Paul Evans

    The Marches, Shropshire: In this garden we’ve had woolly aphids, rose aphids, whitefly and blackfly, now we have Californian maple aphids, who have a story of their own

    An accidental touch of a branch brings a handful of little sticky dots. Looking at the branch, the surprise is that all the lower ones are covered with a shifting pointillism of dots moving together. Under a hand lens they become autonomous animals – aphids.

    There are thousands of them, moving independently as individuals, each with a sense of purpose and moment, determined and working together. Forming clusters around scar tissue on bark wounds, walking upwards towards the canopy of opening leaves, the aphids catch the sunlight and their amber bodies shine with the viscosity of drops of honey. In the morning sun they cast shadows, an imaginary material to which old fears and prejudices stick.

    Continue reading...

  • Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety

    Americans have often moved between states for opportunities. Now they’re being forced to uproot themselves to escape hostile forces under Trump

    Continue reading...

  • He fought to stop the forest being felled. The price was 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit

    The UN has called the detention of Pablo López Alavez ‘arbitrary’, while human rights organisations say his sentence is part of a systematic and alarming pattern of criminalisation of Mexico’s environmental activists

    The meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as “First things first”, “Live and let live” and “Little by little, you’ll go far”.

    Pablo López Alavez, a 56-year-old environmental defender, has had nearly 15 years to contemplate these sentiments – and faces 15 more, after being imprisoned for murders he says he did not commit.

    Continue reading...

  • A dwarf crocodile carried home by a hunter: Thomas Nicolon’s best photograph

    ‘As a species, these crocs are easy to find and easy to catch. Brice Itoua is the most skilled hunter in his village. But they kill the crocs to eat – not to sell’

    The Congo dwarf crocodile is a lovely species. They’re very shy and, unfortunately, very easy to find and catch. Mostly hunted for their bushmeat, these crocs only grow up to a few feet in length and during the dry season, they often spend the daytime hiding in burrows and dens at the water’s edge. Hunters use a long, woody liana vine with a hook on the end to drag them out, before binding their snout with a shorter vine and carrying them away.

    Last summer, I shot a story about the Congo dwarf crocodile after being given access to the Lake Télé Community Reserve by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which manages this protected area in the Republic of the Congo with the Congolese government.

    Continue reading...

  • Mediterranean megaflood carved out hills in Sicily, study reveals

    Rock deposits provide first land-based evidence of Earth’s largest flood, when water surged through strait of Gibraltar

    The event that refilled the Mediterranean basin 5m years ago is thought to have been the largest flood in Earth’s history, with water surging through the present-day strait of Gibraltar 1,000 times faster than the Amazon River, filling the basin in just a couple of years. Now jumbled rock deposits on the top of hills in south-east Sicily provide the first land-based evidence for this flood.

    The megaflood theory emerged in 2009, when scientists discovered a massive eroded channel at the bottom of the strait of Gibraltar. Subsequent research has revealed scours on the sea floor, showing how the water forced its way through the shallow gap between Sicily and mainland Africa, to fill the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

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