About plants that can destroy armies

(rhododendron luteum)

In spring Lesvos is just one big public garden full of wild flowers, but I already said that once. Last week I wrote that the flower of flowers is the orchid, but the nicest spring-attraction here on the island — and each year I have to mention them — is the rivers of yellow rhododendrons that flow though the dark pine woods on the slopes of the mountains between Parakila, Anemotia and Vatoussa.

These flowers are not only beautiful to look at, but they smell like divine nectar. When you walk through the woods in the West their heavy, sweet scent is so heavy in the fresh pine forest air that you could easily become intoxicated. As long as you only devour them with your nose you’ll be all right, but don’t ever try to taste their honey.

Around 400 BC the two sons of Darius II of Babylon, Artaxerxes and Cyrus, got in a fight over who should inherit their father’s power after his death. Artaxerxes won and banished Cyrus to a remote part of Greece. There Cyrus gathered an army together and went back to Babylon to try and take power from his brother. He did not succeed, he was killed and his army defeated. Xenophon, a kind of war correspondent-historian who traveled with Cyrus, put the army back together and traveled back to where they came from. On the way they had to fight other enemies and in the country of Colchis they were attacked. They managed to break through a small division of soldiers and continued their way towards Trebizond in the district of Pontus. When they felt safe they stopped to rest and gather food. They found honey and ate plenty of it. That same night all soldiers — about ten thousand in all were left — became ill and behaved like they were drugged. It was lucky the Army of Colchis did not find them then, otherwise they all would have easily been killed. Centuries later scientists guessed that they probably ate from the yellow rhododendron luteum, also known as rhododendron Pontica because it’s in the Pontus area where they grow in profusion.

Honey can be dangerous if you buy it from a beekeeper that does not know the plants — there are many poisonous species which vary from slightly dangerous to very toxic. One of the best known, and very poisonous in Greek history is hemlock. It is famous thanks to the death of one of the greatest philosophers. In 399 BC Socrates was accused of neglecting the Gods who were ruling in his time and for speaking about ‘new gods’. He was judged to be a bad influence on youngsters and was given the choice of exile for life from Greece or death by drinking a cup of poison. Socrates chose the latter path and it is said that the poison he drank came from the plant we call hemlock.

Hemlock (Conium maculatum) looks a little like chervil and can grow up to two meters high. It is an inconspicuous plant in the Greek landscape. Its juice however contains nerve gas that in a small quantity can be fatal. So you better stay away from conium maculatum, or hemlock.

But tell that to the birds! They have no problem eating hemlock seeds and seem to like them without suffering any ill effects. However, there is a problem if the birds that eat hemlock seeds are themselves eaten — by humans. On Chios some people who ate partridges shot during a hunting expedition fell ill and after an investigation it was found that, yes, it was the seeds of the hemlock that caused their illness.

Whenever a volcano erupts and spews huge clouds of ash, stone and glass in the air that endanger airplanes, it is understandable that they have to be they grounded. So maybe you might think it might be forbidden to hunt birds on Chios in case they are toxic — so in that case, better to leave them in the air than bring them to ground, or the dinner table? But no, the people of Chios want the impossible. Like trying to catch the dangerous volcanic clouds up in the sky, they now want to destroy all the hemlock on their island.

Everybody who has been to Chios or any other Greek island knows that it would be an impossible task. Who would go and eradicate the plants on the islands and regions that are uninhabited? Would not the birds that fly there bring back hemlock seeds? And who could guarantee that no birds from Lesvos ever made a little trip to Chios, having consumed a swathe of hemlock seeds? Should the airspaces between the two islands be closed to bird traffic, or wouldn’t it be simpler to just but a ban on hunting them?

We must hope that no beekeeper falls in love with the magnificent yellow rhododendrons and puts his beehives close to their wonderful flowers to get that marvelous aroma in his honey. If that happened the people of Lesvos might then have to go off into the volcanic regions of the island—where the abundant crops of wild rhododendrons can be found— to pull up or destroy the flowers with weedicide. That would be a great loss of one of the most beautiful attractions of Lesvos in the spring.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

Where is the queen?!

Photo Vespa orientalis: Robin Edwards

The first heat wave of summer has started. That means that all kinds of insects are looking for a home inside our house. Spiders, ants and other creepy things will invade, looking for water and sweet things. It means we have to clean extremely carefully: leave no bread crumbs behind, tightly close the sugar pot and don’t leave out tea cups or coffee cups with sugar or sweetener in them. My house soon will be a Walhalla for entomologists, just like the modern Greek political world will be a Walhalla for Aristophanes…

Aristophanes was a Greek poet and playwriter who lived from 446 BC – 386 BC. He is known because eleven of his plays have survived. They were usually only once performed at a festival visited by the ‘jet set’ of ancient Athens. Its administrators knew no shame, and Aristophanes had no qualms about making fools of his high tone audience, the hot shots in the front row.

And now it’s the turn of the Greek administrators of today to once more be made fools of. The reason? Because nearly half the population of Greece failed to turn up and vote in last Sunday’s European parliamentary elections. Most Greeks thought it was more important to visit the beach than going to the polls. Sadly, the ruling Neo Demokratia party has proved that it is just as corrupt as its main rival Pasok, and so Greeks are fed up with politics.

The fact that the Pasok won the most votes was shaded by the low turn out. You can see it as an act of massive civil disobedience, because voting in Greece is compulsory — although nobody is ever punished for breaking the law.

If Aristophanes were alive now, he would have a lot of fun making fools of our contemporary politicians. If you read him you will see that in his day politics were also a mess. In his play ‘The Wasps’ he satirizes old Athenian men that played the role judge for money, but never delivered justice in a fair way. The man who governed Athens in Airstophanes’ time was Cleon, and the playwright certainly made a fool of him.

In this political comedy the old men who are the judges, come to help a colleague, but are shown to be a swarm of wasps with nasty stings. You can say the same today; our politicians are just the same dangerous swarm of wasps, and although the insects are essential to the cycle of life in nature, they can also threaten your life. It is very dangerous to try and destroy a nest of wasps because they get angry and attack, and that could be fatal.

The results of the voting for Europe in Greece was just like an attack on the nest of the Neo Demokratia. The leader and Greek premier Karamanlis will have to respond, but most people think he will just shuffle a few of his ministers. He is not a real ‘queen’ wasp, because it is the opponents of our political system that really might deliver the fatal sting: think of anarchistic youth and students who have not stopped their rebellion since the riots of last December. They are angry enough to keep on fighting, attacking banks and luxury shops with fire bombs and rocks.

So the wasp (Sfika in Greek) is very much alive in Greek life. Research on our neighboring island of Chios (by Mike Taylor of the Liverpool Museum in the UK) has found a big variety of wasp species, like the so-called spider wasp (Pompilidae), that hunts pseudo-tarantula’s (woaw, I can’t believe those creeps might be here as well…) and other big spiders on Chios.

I myself recently encountered a queen wasp in my house. She was at least 5 centimeters long and belonged to the hornet family, a Vespa orientalis (or was it a Scolia flavifrons?). Anyhow, these hornet wasps are huge, and just like some politicians they like to eat the bread (well, in case of a wasp it is meat or fish) off your plate (Dutch expression).

I am happy that I am not too afraid of this gigantic wasp species, because they are so big and noisy, you usually see or hear them coming first. So I gently put our royal flying monster out of the house. However, the next day she was back again, exploring our living room. I decided to evict her for a second time, but the next day again she got in through her own secret entrance and this time there was no way I could catch her.

I spent two days wasp-catching and on the third day it was too much, so I decided to ignore her. That wasn’t easy: try to concentrate while such a missile is flying around your head. But I managed; so well that I lost all trace of her. And now I am worried. I have no idea how wasps live, and so I can only hope that this great queen is not so sneaky as to brood (and breed) in complete silent seclusion in a secret hidden nest somewhere inside the house. Imagine if in a few weeks I enter my living room and am attacked by a swarm of colossal stinging beasts! Just like a lot of politicians, not all wasps are to be trusted…


(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009