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

  • Dangerous temperatures forecast for parts of Europe as heatwave moves east

    Red warnings issued in Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Balkans, with authorities urging people to stay indoors

    Parts of central, eastern and southern Europe sweltered on Monday as the “heat dome” behind last week’s record-breaking temperatures shifted east, bringing dangerous conditions to a new swathe of the continent.

    Budapest is forecast to exceed 40C on Tuesday, according to models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

    Continue reading...

  • New campaign urges public to reduce water use as UK emerges from heatwave

    Exclusive: £75m publicity drive will ask people to treat water as precious resource and cut daily use by 28 litres

    The biggest ever campaign to encourage the public to reduce their water use will launch this week, as the UK emerges from record temperatures attributed to the climate crisis.

    The £75m publicity drive, called Let’s Save Water, will advise and encourage people to treat water as a precious resource and has a target for everyone to cut their daily use by 28 litres – or two large buckets – from the current average use of about 140 litres a day.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Literally growing the future’: volunteers help save Scottish rainforest by collecting 11m seeds

    Teams painstakingly combed endangered Atlantic habitat over several years, helping to grow 8m native trees

    A small band of volunteers has helped to grow nearly 8m native trees in Scotland, crucial to efforts to restore lost parts of the Atlantic rainforest, after collecting 11m seeds by hand.

    About 100 volunteers, including retired teachers and doctors, office workers and young families, have spent tens of thousands of hours venturing into often remote woods in the western Highlands and islands to search out seed-bearing trees.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres

    In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global

    When Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich all the time because of what happened in 1993, when she was instrumental in suing Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of residents of the town of Hinkley, California, whose groundwater had been contaminated. The case resulted in a settlement of $333m – then the largest ever payout for a direct-action lawsuit. When she was immortalised by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, she became the hero we didn’t know we needed, a modern day Joan of Arc. She had won against PG&E with no formal legal training.

    The emails she received a few weeks ago were about datacentres. In April, she put a callout on her website asking for anyone with concerns about one near them to get in touch. Within a month, 3,862 people had replied. Tech companies have needed datacentres to power their technology “for ever”, she says, but the new ones being built to power AI? “This feels like Hinkley on steroids.”

    Continue reading...

  • ‘British food will disappear’: trade deal after Brexit is hitting UK farmers hard

    Home-grown food may become a niche product for wealthy in our supermarkets as British farmers’ incomes plummet

    For Liz Webster, who farms 647 hectares (1600 acres) in Wiltshire, south west England, the latest impact of Brexit has been particularly brutal. About £400 per animal has been wiped off the price she can get for her beef cattle, a hefty blow at a time when all the inputs – feed, energy, fertiliser – are going through the roof.

    The fall in price, on livestock that typically fetch £2,000 to £3,000 per animal, is the result of a flood of cheaper meat arriving from Australia, the result of one of the new trade deals the government has signed since the UK left the European Union. Prices for beef in the supermarkets have remained broadly the same, but farmers have seen their income plummet.

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: There’s no blackbird song like the one on my street | Josie George

    Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: With summer’s great silence coming, we must enjoy the birdsong while we can – as I have done with my local conifer crooner

    I have two summer earworms right now. The first is O Sole Mio, the jingle of our local ice-cream van, the second is a particular phrase that our resident blackbird keeps singing. Four notes, moving down the scale but ending slightly on the minor: that’s his party piece, delivered after a jazzy performance that includes dozens of other motifs. He likes to bellow it from the tallest tip of the conifer tree that sways over the road, and I can’t stop whistling it.

    He will have developed this refrain over years, and like all musicians, he will have started off shakily. If I didn’t notice it last season, it was probably because he was still a shy apprentice, his song unfinished as he practised quietly to work out his preferred combination of notes.

    Continue reading...

  • The last continent: how deadly bird flu travelled the world before landing on a remote Australian beach

    The H5N1 virus has now reached every continent on the planet. What does it mean for some of the world’s unique species?

    • This article contains images of dead wildlife. Reader discretion is advised

    It was a rough five-day sail from the Falkland Islands and, as the science expedition approached the South Georgia coast, they found fur seal carcasses floating on the water. “There were these moments when it would hit us,” says Dr Jane Younger, remembering the expedition to the British subantarctic territory six months ago.

    Younger, an ecologist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, was with scientists from the United States, France, South Africa and the Falklands to check on the spread of the H5N1 variant of bird flu.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘It’s open green space versus construction’: Delhi’s historic polo club and the battle for the city’s future

    The government’s requisition of a historic green space has ignited a fierce debate about air quality and heat stress in India’s scorching capital

    For decades, the social highlight of winters in Delhi for the “beautiful people” was the polo season. A sprinkling of royalty and diplomats, impeccably groomed women in pearls and chiffon saris, along with wealthy industrialists sporting silk pocket squares used to gather to watch polo players compete under the mild, balmy sun.

    They cheered on handsome players who, once the match was over, had children shrieking in delight as they put on a heart-stopping display of tent-pegging derring-do. Swish champagne lunches and other après-polo celebrations followed.

    Continue reading...

  • Is the Northern Territory a ‘mini Trump-style’ government?

    The CLP’s ‘tough on crime’, pro-development agenda brings sweeping changes, which advocates say cut the NT’s most vulnerable out of the conversation

    The Northern Territory is out of sight – and often out of mind – for many Australians. But for 18 months, environment, First Nations, justice and family groups have been sounding the alarm with increasing urgency.

    The populist “tough on crime” agenda which saw the Country Liberal party, led by Lia Finocchiaro, sweep to power in 2024 has been taking shape, and those representing the territory’s most vulnerable people, communities and ecosystems are worried.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘A sad inevitability’: after decades of climate warnings, why is Europe so unprepared for rising heat?

    Scorching summer of 2003 triggered first efforts to deal with the problem but heatwaves still have devastating impact

    On Wednesday, Pierre Masselot received a text from his daughter’s nursery – less than 50 miles from the weather station that was the first this week to break the UK June temperature record – asking parents to collect children early because the school buildings were about to get worryingly hot.

    Similar scenes were repeated across Europe this week as the continent swelters through its most severe and widespread heatwave on record – an oppressive force made hotter by carbon pollution and less bearable by repeated failures to prepare for it. France experienced its hottest day and night on record, while the UK and Switzerland both broke their heat records for a June day.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.