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

  • Take down bird feeders this summer to cut spread of avian disease, says RSPB

    Charity advises replacing seed and nut feeders, where birds gather, with small amounts of mealworms, fat balls or suet

    Garden birds should not be fed seeds and nuts over the summer months, the RSPB has said, in an attempt to reduce the spread of avian diseases.

    Bird lovers are being urged to take down their bird feeders between May and October to help birds such as the greenfinch, whose numbers have plummeted after the spread of trichomonosis, a parasitic disease transmitted more easily when birds cluster around feeders in the warmer months.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘I’m worried there’s too much of me,’ says a birch: inside the interspecies council giving nature a voice

    In a village in Norway, humans representing flora and fauna of all kinds meet to reimagine ‘nature-centric governance’

    “My ask of humans is quite large,” says the northern bat to a room of reindeer, wolf lichen, bog, and other beings. “It’s a shift of consciousness, and an understanding that … we are a relation.”

    The scene could come from a sci-fi novel imagining a more-than-human uprising. In fact, it’s from a recent “interspecies council” in Oppdal, Norway, in which non-humans – spoken for by humans – convened to discuss the region’s future.

    Continue reading...

  • Anger as swifts’ nesting holes in Derbyshire rail viaduct ‘blocked up’

    Campaigners say birds could die trying to access ancestral nests that were sealed during rail refurbishment

    Some swifts returning to Britain to breed will be unable to access their ancestral nesting holes after they were blocked in a £7.5m refurbishment of a Derbyshire railway viaduct, campaigners say.

    Nature lovers had appealed to Network Rail to unblock three holes which were among at least nine swift nesting sites on the twin viaducts at Chapel Milton, on the edge of the Peak District.

    Continue reading...

  • Wild chimpanzees recorded waging ‘civil war’ with coordinated attacks between two groups

    New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps, in Uganda, turning on itself

    On a June day in 2015, primatologist Aaron Sandel was quietly observing a small cluster of the Ngogo chimpanzee group in Uganda’s Kibale national park when he noticed something strange. As other members of the chimpanzees’ wider group moved closer through the forest, the chimpanzees in front of him began to display nervous behaviour. They grimaced and touched each other for reassurance, acting more like they were about to meet strangers than close companions.

    In hindsight, Sandel said, that moment was the first sign of what would become a years-long bloody conflict between a once close-knit group of chimps.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘An abomination’: the Lancashire town kicking up a stink over reopened landfill

    Residents of Fleetwood say continuous foul smell from Transwaste site is causing illness and making life hell

    In the week that many families went to the coast for the fresh sea air or the tang of fish and chips, visitors to one Lancashire resort inhaled a rather more unpleasant aroma.

    “Welcome to Fleetwood,” read the local newspaper headline. “The town that smells of bin juice.”

    Continue reading...

  • Week in wildlife: an ostrich on the lam, a tortoise crossing a road and surfing seals

    This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: A sun-warmed day has the bees feeling hot | Claire Stares

    Langstone, Hampshire: Solitary bees, albeit hundreds of them, are hovering low to the ground, hoping to mate before nightfall

    One of the 68 UK-recorded species of mining bee in the genus Andrena, the ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria) is classified as solitary. Yet on the narrow, balding strip of turf in front of my neighbours’ garage, they appear anything but.

    The ground shimmers with movement, as several hundred bees hover low in the spring sunshine. While each female maintains her own burrow – a neat, pencil-eraser-sized hole excavated in the bare, sun-warmed soil – they’ve gathered here in a dense aggregation, turning this modest patch into a bustling settlement.

    Continue reading...

  • The war over Omagh’s gold: the £21bn mine plan tearing a community apart

    On Monday, a public inquiry will reopen, nine years after the plan was proposed and a toxic local battle began

    When Fidelma O’Kane retired more than a decade ago from her career as a social worker and lecturer, she thought she would be “travelling and having a glass of wine and eating chocolate and reading books” while based in the quiet, hilly corner of rural County Tyrone where she has lived almost all her life.

    It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, an idle remark from a neighbour would set O’Kane on a path that would become an all-consuming mission. A mining company, the neighbour told her, was planning to drill for long-rumoured reserves of gold in the Sperrins, the low peatland mountain range in Northern Ireland where O’Kane’s family has lived for generations.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘That’ll be the end’: actor Sam Neill joins fight to stop controversial goldmine near his New Zealand vineyard

    Neill says ‘one of the most beautiful and remote places in the world’ will be permanently changed if Bendigo-Ophir wins fast-track approval

    The grapevines in Sam Neill’s vineyard in Central Otago – a picturesque region known for its undulating hills and wines – are pregnant with pinot noir grapes, almost ripe for picking as autumn arrives.

    “My family has been here for over 150 years. I’m connected to this land like nowhere else on earth,” the 78-year-old actor and winemaker says. “It’s perfect for wine. It’s great for tourism. And it’s one of the most beautiful and strange, remote places in the world.”

    Continue reading...

  • Argentina just ripped up its pioneering glacier law. What does this mean for millions of people’s drinking water?

    Javier Milei’s reforms to the law will open up high-altitude areas to mining and risk water reserves already strained by the climate crisis, say activists

    Saul Zeballos was born and raised in Jáchal, a community tucked into the foothills of the Andes in Argentina, drinking water from the river that bears the town’s name. That changed in 2005, when the Veladero gold and silver mine started operating in San Juan province.

    A decade later, a major cyanide spill from the mine polluted the rivers in the San Juan region, raising fears it could affect waterways downstream in the Jáchal basin, although further studies have shown that cyanide levels remained at safe levels. Two further spills were reported in 2016 and 2017 and are still under investigation.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

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