flower – Stones Of Ithaca

From Kopitoto to Momina Skala on Vitosha, the mountain south of Sofia, a short distance but an encyclopaedia of flowers.

Meadow vetchling (pea), cicely (celery), the ethereal willowherb, the incredibly named perennial honesty (as a race we should adopt this flower), spotted dead-nettle, tansy chrysanthemum, dusky crane’s-bill, heal-all (mint), spreading bellflower, water forget-me-not, bladder campion, great masterwort (onion), sulphur clover, winged broom, Breckland thyme (mint, the butterflies were crazy about this one), bloody crane’s-bill, starwort, great mullein, bush vetch (pea), alpine rose. Incalculable wealth at our feet.

Some of these photos were taken in and around Presopta Place, the crossroads between Kopitoto and Momina Skala, about which I have written a poem called “Presopta Place”.

The most common colour of flowers in and around the city of Thessaloniki in Greece is pink-purple, followed by white. Many are native to the Mediterranean basin or, more broadly, to Eurasia, but several are from America (amaryllis, pinklady, pink-sorrel, silverleaf nightshade), there is one from Australia (the wonderfully named crimson bottlebrush, the last of the photos), and perhaps surprisingly there is a whole group from South Africa (Cape Marguerite, sour fig, treasure flower). Flowers are just as widely travelled as we are!