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

  • First of nine new river walks in England announced for north-west

    Mersey Valley Way takes in Manchester and Stockport on its 13-mile route with other walks to be identified in 2026

    A new river walk has been announced by the government as ministers try to improve access to nature in England.

    The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged.

    Continue reading...

  • Staying at home could leave you exposed to indoor air pollution, study reveals

    Secondhand tobacco smoke and routine tasks such as operating the stove shown to be biggest emitters of indoor pollution in UK homes

    Christmas and New Year is a time when many people will be at home. Being indoors can give us a degree of protection from outdoor air pollution, but it can also trap pollution we produce inside our homes.

    Risks from secondhand tobacco smoke are well known and the effect is perhaps best seen by comparison of health data before and after indoor smoking bans. A study of 47 indoor smoking bans in public spaces found hospital admissions for heart attacks decreased by an average of 12%, but people are less aware of other indoor pollutants and how to minimise them.

    Continue reading...

  • Living on the edge: what young people in England told us about life on the coast

    As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave

    Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.

    Continue reading...

  • Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests

    Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flights

    The take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.

    Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulfil the requirement.

    Continue reading...

  • Year in wildlife – in pictures

    We look back over the year’s wildlife photographs, and hand out some much-deserved gongs to brilliant and beautiful creatures around the world

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Little rituals to help sparrows and wrens | Paul Evans

    The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live in

    The sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in a much more vivid and emotional society than as mere victims of an indifferent nature that is economical at the expense of compassion.

    To say they come to the feeding station sounds a bit grand for a small bird table, a few hanging fat balls and a scattering of seed and mealworms in a back yard in Oswestry. The first adventurers edge in, not just to explore the food source but to play in a space of subtle changes that have happened in their place. When the whole host, quarrel or ubiquity move in, there must be over 30 birds. The energy of their performance is contagious.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘They’re scared of us now’: how co-investment in a tropical forest saw off loggers

    Low-cost tech and joined-up funding have reduced illegal logging, mining and poaching in the Darién Gap – it’s a success story that could stop deforestation worldwide

    There are no roads through the Darién Gap. This vast impenetrable forest spans the width of the land bridge between South and Central America, but there is almost no way through it: hundreds have lost their lives trying to cross it on foot.

    Its size and hostility have shielded it from development for millennia, protecting hundreds of species – from harpy eagles and giant anteaters to jaguars and red-crested tamarins – in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. But it has also made it incredibly difficult to protect. Looking after 575,000 hectares (1,420,856 acres) of beach, mangrove and rainforest with just 20 rangers often felt impossible, says Segundo Sugasti, the director of Darién national park. Like tropical forests all over the world, it has been steadily shrinking, with at least 15% lost to logging, mining and cattle ranching in two decades.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Freedom is a city where you can breathe’: four experts on Europe’s most liveable capitals

    From Copenhagen’s cycle lanes and Vienna’s shared parks to Barcelona and London’s unfulfilled potential, better living is close at hand

    The angry rumble of a speeding SUV. The metallic smog of backlogged traffic. The aching heat of sun-dried neighbourhoods baking in an oven of concrete and asphalt.

    For most people, the mundane threats that plague our environments are likely to annoy more than they spark dread. But for scientists who know just how dangerous our surroundings can be, the burden of knowledge weighs heavy each day. Across Europe, environmental risks cause 18% of deaths from cardiovascular disease and 10% of deaths from cancer. Traffic crashes in the EU kill five times more people than murders.

    Continue reading...

  • Barracuda, grouper, tuna – and seaweed: Madagascar’s fishers forced to find new ways to survive

    Seaweed has become a key cash crop as climate change and industrial trawling test the resilient culture of the semi-nomadic Vezo people

    Along Madagascar’s south-west coast, the Vezo people, who have fished the Mozambique Channel for countless generations, are defined by a way of life sustained by the sea. Yet climate change and industrial exploitation are pushing this ocean-based culture to its limits.

    Coastal villages around Toliara, a city in southern Madagascar, host tens of thousands of the semi-nomadic Vezopeople, who make a living from small-scale fishing on the ocean. For centuries, they have launched pirogues, small boats carved from single tree trunks, every day into the turquoise shallows to catch tuna, barracuda and grouper.

    A boat near lines of seaweed, which has become a main source of income for Ambatomilo village as warmer seas, bleached reefs and erratic weather accelerate the decline of local fish populations

    Continue reading...

  • ‘This is the Costco of energy, man!’: author Bill McKibben on the promise of renewables

    The activist and author of Here Comes the Sun discusses rapid advances in solar and wind power and how the US ceded leadership in the sector to its main rival

    Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature, published in 1989, warned early of the dangers of climate changes and he has been campaigning and writing ever since. His most recent book, Here Comes the Sun, takes a look at the soaring potential of renewable energy

    Is your latest book a more optimistic take on this world?

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

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