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

  • Offshore windfarm contracts to fuel 12m homes in Great Britain after record auction

    Subsidies awarded to eight new projects help keep UK on track to decarbonise by 2030

    A make-or-break auction for the UK government’s goal to create a clean electricity system by 2030 has awarded subsidy contracts to enough offshore windfarms to power 12m homes.

    In Great Britain’s most competitive auction for renewable subsidies to date, energy companies vied for contracts that guarantee the price for each unit of clean electricity they generate.

    Continue reading...

  • Human activity helped make 2025 third-hottest year on record, experts say

    Data leads scientists to declare 2015 Paris agreement to keep global heating below 1.5C ‘dead in the water’

    Last year was the third hottest on record, scientists have said, with mounting fossil fuel pollution behind “exceptional” temperatures.

    The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said 2025 had continued a three-year streak of “extraordinary global temperatures” during which surface air temperatures averaged 1.48C above preindustrial levels.

    Continue reading...

  • BP to take hit of up to $5bn on green energy as it refocuses on fossil fuels

    Energy company also under pressure from worse oil trading performance and weaker oil prices

    BP has said it expects to write down the value of its struggling green energy business by as much as $5bn (£3.7bn), as it refocuses on fossil fuels under its new chair, Albert Manifold.

    The oil company said the writedowns were mostly related to its gas and low-carbon energy divisions in its “transition businesses”, but added that wiping between $4bn and $5bn off their value would not affect its underlying profits when it reports its full-year results in February.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body

    Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a ‘joke’

    High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell”.

    Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Which is the ‘fast sinker’ out of me and the grebe? | Nic Wilson

    Waresley, Cambridgeshire:In a near-freezing lake, I’m treated to an up-close view of one of my favourite birds

    The spring-fed lake is a picture of tranquillity this morning. On the far side, ivy-clad trees touch trunks with their watery counterparts, creating an image of a child’s mirror painting folded along the shoreline. Only the soft blurring of branches distinguishes reflection from reality.

    The scene might look serene, but I must focus on my breathing to stay calm as I lower myself slowly into the water, which has chilled to a wintry 6C. I started cold water swimming last month, hoping it would help relieve the chronic pain caused by adenomyosis. It’s only my fourth session, and I’m wondering if I have the confidence to swim across the lifeguarded lake when a quick movement on the water catches my attention. I spot a dumpy ball of fluff that isn’t there.

    Continue reading...

  • Mapped: how the world is losing its forests to wildfires

    Wildfires now destroy twice as much tree cover per year as two decades ago – a crisis fuelled by climate change

    The world is losing forests to fire at an unsustainable rate, experts have warned.

    Wildfires have always been part of nature’s cycle, but in recent decades their scale, frequency and intensity in carbon-rich forests have surged.

    Continue reading...

  • Government’s wildlife targets will be missed in England, watchdog says

    Seven out of 10 targets have little likelihood of being met by 2030, Office for Environmental Protection says

    The government will not meet its targets to save wildlife in England and is failing on almost all environmental measures, the Office for Environmental Protection watchdog has said.

    In a damning report, the OEP has found that seven of the 10 targets set in the Environment Act 2021 have little likelihood of being met by 2030, which is the deadline set in law.

    Continue reading...

  • Six-yearly count to track diverging fortunes of UK and Ireland’s wintering swans

    The international swan census takes place this weekend, with volunteers helping count whooper and Bewick’s swans

    Volunteer birders across the UK and Ireland will be among those taking part in the six-yearly international swan census this weekend, counting numbers of the countries’ two wintering species, whooper and Bewick’s swans.

    The survey, which last took place in January 2020, aims to track changes in the populations of these charismatic wildfowl in the UK and Ireland. The whoopers have mainly travelled from Iceland and the Bewick’s from Siberia.

    Continue reading...

  • Africa’s great elephant divide: countries struggle with too many elephants – or too few

    In countries such as South Sudan, the great herds have all but disappeared. But further south, conservation success mean increasing human-wildlife conflict

    It is late on a January afternoon in the middle of South Sudan’s dry season, and the landscape, pricked with stubby acacias, is hazy with smoke from people burning the grasslands to encourage new growth. Even from the perspective of a single-engine ultralight aircraft, we are warned it will be hard to spot the last elephant in Badingilo national park, a protected area covering nearly 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq miles).

    Technology helps – the 20-year-old bull elephant wears a GPS collar that pings coordinates every hour. The animal’s behaviour patterns also help; Badingilo’s last elephant is so lonely that it moves with a herd of giraffes.

    Continue reading...

  • The crisis whisperer: how Adam Tooze makes sense of our bewildering age

    Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve entered

    In late January 2025, 10 days after Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president of the United States, an economic conference in Brussels brought together several officials from the recently deposed Biden administration for a discussion about the global economy. In Washington, Trump and his wrecking crew were already busy razing every last brick of Joe Biden’s legacy, but in Brussels, the Democratic exiles put on a brave face. They summoned the comforting ghosts of white papers past, intoning old spells like “worker-centered trade policy” and “middle-out bottom-up economics”. They touted their late-term achievements. They even quoted poetry: “We did not go gently into that good night,” Katherine Tai, who served as Biden’s US trade representative, said from the stage. Tai proudly told the audience that before leaving office she and her team had worked hard to complete “a set of supply-chain-resiliency papers, a set of model negotiating texts, and a shipbuilding investigation”.

    It was not until 70 minutes into the conversation that a discordant note was sounded, when Adam Tooze joined the panel remotely. Born in London, raised in West Germany, and living now in New York, where he teaches at Columbia, Tooze was for many years a successful but largely unknown academic. A decade ago he was recognised, when he was recognised at all, as an economic historian of Europe. Since 2018, however, when he published Crashed, his “contemporary history” of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, Tooze has become, in the words of Jonathan Derbyshire, his editor at the Financial Times, “a sort of platonic ideal of the universal intellectual”.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

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