Title: Wild Flowers of Greece: Author: Vangelis Papiomitoglou.
ISBN 960- 8227- 74- 7 Publisher: Mediterraneo Editions. 
website link:  www.mediterraneo.gr
Price: Around 24 Euros. 
Source: Book Sellers/Publisher.


Wild Flowers of Greece: The Review.

Allelujiah!  A wild flower book that has everything, as far as I am concerned!  

There are so many good features about it that I hardly know where to start.  

Things I particularly liked are as follows:  

All the information on botanic classification you could wish for is there, but everything is set out in extremely straightforward language. I have never before seen such a clear explanation of the various groupings of the plants – and having a small photograph of a typical flower head to illustrate the different groups is a brilliant idea, and saves having to trawl through the whole book just to identify one particular plant.  

Each plant is illustrated by a minimum of two photographs – one showing it actually growing, and the other a close-up of the flower, seed-pod or leaf, to help in identification.  

At the end of the description about each plant are a series of symbols which tell you how widespread the plant is, how tall it grows, at what altitude you might expect to find it, whether it is poisonous, medicinal, edible, rare or just decorative.  

Also at the end of each description is a chart which shows you the flowering period – which is blindingly obvious, of course, but very useful.  

The text is clear, interesting and in plain language. A special mention here ought to go to Jill Pittinger, the translator, who has done a first-class job. She must obviously be a flower enthusiast herself, because the original Greek has been translated into flawless English, with none of the garbled, half-strangled descriptions you might expect  

Whilst on the subject of the text, it also includes interesting information – not just botanical – with reference to the plant’s incidence in mythology, or use in ancient times.  

There are useful fold-out half-covers at the front and back of the book, if you want to mark a place of interest. These half-covers contain a small measuring scale, photographs of the various flower forms (with explanatory information), and illustrations of what is meant by the different descriptions of the leaves.  

There is a useful bibliography at the end, containing a list of more than twenty five other relevant flower books, in English, Greek, German and French.  

I sat down and worked through this very readable book, cover to cover, and was sorry when I reached the end. It does not pretend to include every flower that is found in Greece – it has ‘around 600 varieties of the most representative of the Greek flora’. But it identified for me a tiny flower I came across one January – a flower which had previously eluded identification, despite checking in a number of other flower books. It was the lovely (and apparently very rare) Androcymbium rechingeri – a very tiny crocus-like white lily.  

If you only buy one book about the flowers of Greece, I cannot recommend this one highly enough. I paid 24 euros for mine, and  consider it was money extremely well spent.