Crete & Pelops

[Matt T]

Hello folks,

In two weeks time we will be travelling to Greece, plant hunting in Crete for one week (23-30 Oct) and the Southern Pelops (30 Oct - 5 Nov) for a further week - yes Maggi, off travelling again! 

I have all the usual books and read reports on a number of threads on this forum etc, so have a long list of potential plants/sites to see and a few favourite species that I'm looking out for (autumn bulbs clearly the object). However, there's so much that it'll be impossible to hit them all in the time we have.

So, can you recommend you one unmissable site or sight that we MUST see whilst we're in Crete or the Pelops??

Many thanks in advance!

[Matt T]

No suggestions? 

To set minds at rest, I'm plant 'hunting' with a camera (not a trowel, which would be illegal in most cases anyway) and I will be sharing photos here on my return.

I'm not being lazy, and have worked (several times) through travel threads on this Forum and my copies of Mountain Flower Walks, Bulbs of Greece etc. So I have gleaned a very long list of places to go and what we might see there.

What I'd hoped for was a personal recommendation for the one thing that was most memorable about your trip.

Grateful to anyone who might want to share their favourites.

Thanks,
M

[Margaret Thorne]

We have visited both Crete and the Peloponnese 4 times in the autumn, so should be able to answer your question, but it is an impossible one!  Sites which are fantastic one year can be bare the next even if you go on exactly the same date and it is impossible to predict whether the season will be early or late. As Crocus like north facing sites and Sternbergia south facing ones, there are few sites which are outstanding for both. This is why you always have to go to a series of sites to guarantee seeing a good range of species of interest.
In our experience, you are a bit early for the Crocus on Crete which generally do not appear in good numbers until November, by which time you are too late for Colchicum macrophyllum which should be in full flower while you are there. THE place to see them is Anopoli (above Chora Sfakion) and we recommend stopping at the bakers for a freshly cooked Sfakion pie, a delicious local speciality. Then you could go on to the nearby spectacular Aradhena Gorge which has a great selection of other autumn flowering bulbs (Sternbergia sicula, Allium callimischon, Narcissus serotinus, Scilla autumnalis, Colchicum cretense) as well as all the amazing chasmophytes which will mostly be past flowering (other than the best of them all, Origanum dictamnus) but still recognisable by their foliage.
The Cyclamen should also be looking good while you are on Crete and the sites for these in the west are well documented.
But who knows, there may have been a lot of rain this year and perhaps the Crocus will all be out earlier! Happy hunting.

[Maggi Young]

  and we recommend stopping at the bakers for a freshly cooked Sfakion pie, a delicious local speciality.   

Ahh, Margaret, now that's good advice       Gotta love an experienced traveller's suggestion 

[Margaret Thorne]

Maggi, the freshly cooked pies come with lashings of honey and are therefore best eaten on the premises! -  you’d love them.
Have just noticed Matt’s ‘Nuts about Narcissus’. There is autumn flowering Narcissus tazetta on crags east of the main Vrises to Chora Sfakion road, just south of the turn for Alikambos; also a few in the terraces below the road on the west side, which is easier for access for photography, but they probably get dug up from here.
A week just isn’t long enough for Crete or the Pelops!

[Matt T]

Hi Margaret,
Thank you for your comments - botanical and culinary!
We know we'll have to take our chances with what we'll find dependent upon weather and climate, being ecologists we're used to dealing with the vagaries of nature, but it's helpful to have a personal steer on what has excited other folk.
Thanks for taking the time to pen some thoughts! 
Matt

[krisderaeymaeker]

Hi Matt , 

Seems you have good prospects !
I hope for you that the autumn rains arrived early on both destinations. I was in Crete  (see my report on the forum) at the end of november and beginning of december and in that year it was just the right time for Crocus and Sternbergia.
I could be that it is to early for some species or that you are -as Margaret allready says- a bit in between.... To early for most Crocus  and Sternbergia on Crete and to late for some Colchicum.
One thing is sure , you wil find good Cyclamen.
I was in the Pelops by the end of september and was lucky to find Sternbergia sicula , colchiciflora , Crocus mazziaricus and Colchicum graecum in flower.....But in another year it could be that they come into flower much later....So a very difficult thing to say.
One week is very short for both destinations . I have some favorite spots in Crete. But this are both in the west and the east.
Do you have already a schedule where to go ?
 

[Matt T]

Thanks Kris,
We don't have a fixed itinerary, but I think we will be focussing on the west of Crete only - i.e. Rhodopou and Akrotiri peninsulas, Topolia, Sirikari/Polyrinnia.

In addition to not being long enough, this is not solely a plant hunting trip but also a 'holiday' so I have to be kind and allow us to do some other activities too  Luckily, hiking (at a slow pace) can be combined with botanising 

As this trip was a surprise gift, I can't complain about the dates. My partner did some research and booked flights around the dates of a commercial tour, which is pretty resourceful for someone not (yet) a bulb fanatic.

[Tony Willis]

Matt

I have sent you a personal email re the Peloponnese.

[uvularia]

Seeing that you are 'Nuts about Narcissus' I seem to remember thousands of small white autumn flowering narcissus above Alones in the  south near Plakias, Crete. Never did identify them at the time.

[Matt T]

Thanks Paul,
A sea of thousands of Narcissus serotinus is one of my hoped-for sights. Thanks for the tip.
Matt

[Matt T]

Arrived safely back in the UK late last week and even survived the very wet and dark drive back to Skye. We had an amazing time in Greece, it was so good to be back there again. I'm sorting through the photos, but have an embarrassingly large number of them (2,800!). The majority of pics were taken in the Pelops, for which our timing was perfect, so I'll just post a few from Crete here now.

There was some uncertainty about our timing for Crete and how much we might see. However, we always like to get around as much as we can when abroad and were keen to see Crete anyway as this was also a holiday as well as a botanising trip. We didn't see any Crocus on Crete, but did manage to find a reasonable number of other plants but I'm jumping ahead of myself.

The overnight ferry from Piraeus to Hania was a great way to travel and our cabin was comfortable once the ventilation was adjusted - we opted for budget internal cabin seeing as it would be dark for the whole journey and portholes don't open anyway! Our arrival into Hania was greeted with a beautiful, sunny morning (1). However, it seems that we actually managed to coincide with the rains, which soon rolled in from the mountains (2), so we had a damp trip at times, but were well prepared and only had a proper soaking on one day. Our first day was spend exploring Hania itself and the town has enough to entertain when the weather prevents you doing anything else. I rather enjoyed the wee museum, which holds a nicely varied collection. Some of the items that caught my eye (and of which photographs were permitted) include some very characterful figurines, sarcophagi painted with sea creatures and colourful glass bowls (3-5).

[Matt T]

I'd forgotten how confiding the kingfishers are in Greece (6) - I guess the lack of freshwater bodies forces them to the coast and into closer proximity with man than we find in the UK.

With a little trepidation we hired a small car for a couple of days. I'd read horror stories on this Forum of driving in Greece and Crete especially, but have to say that I found driving to be trouble-free and not too stressful at all and we soon got our eye in with Greek road signage and maps (and their non-conformity). Maybe my experience on the Uist roads has hardened me?

We kept our exploration within Western Crete. I'm not sure that I'd planned our botanising trip in Crete too well. Certainly we were more targeted and successful in the Pelops, for which I found much more information was more easily available. More homework for our next Crete trip. However, our time was not wasted as we had a short list of places to try and many fun days.

We headed into the mountains to explore the gorge that runs from Sirikari to Polyrinia. I'm not sure now that we went far enough to find the right place to hit a trail as such and we ended up just exploring the area around Sirikari where we found lots of plants that were interesting because they were new to us. It was nice to see Arbutus unedo in glorious fruit/flower (7), which was familiar to Patrick who is from Ireland. Two plants that we found at pretty much every site we visited or roadside we stopped at were Drimia maritima (8 - actually photographed here in S. Crete) and Scilla (Prospero) autumnalis. We were surprised to find a crab so high up in the mountains! I assumed it was a land crab but wondered how it reproduced if it had to spawn in the sea. Research now tells me that this is the freshwater and semi-terrestrial crab Potamon potamios (9). One interesting 'rock' plant that we did find near the top end of the gorge on a mossy vertical rock face under light woodland was this wee Saxifraga sp. (10)?

[Matt T]

On our way back to Hania we decided to use what daylight remained to look for Cyclamen on the Rhodopou peninsula. Well it wasn't long after I'd exited the 'National Road' (highway) that Patrick chirped up "Cyclamen!" There they were right at the roadside (11) as well as throughout the garrigue on the rocky slopes above (12). I keyed this out as Cyclamen graecum subsp. graecum? A couple of plants had leaves present (13), but most only showed flowers in varying shades of pink, some paler, some deeper but quite a limited palette compared to what we would find elsewhere (14 & 15). A good number of plants were in flower here and we found more further east on our way back, which made a nice end to the day.

[Matt T]

A recurring point of interest throughout our holiday was the ridiculously and seemingly impossibly small places that 'bulbous' plants can find a toehold. This Cyclamen graecum is occupying one of the larger rock pockets (16). These Cyclamen were accompanied by good numbers of Scilla autumnalis (17)

The next day we headed east and south to see if we could find the Sternbergia that Margaret mentioned above (thanks Margaret!). En route we found lots of Euphorbia characias (18), a familiar garden plant, the nicely mottled leaves of an Arum sp. (19) and some Colchicum leaves  (20) in light woodland hinting at earlier flowers we had missed.