Open Greens research on Korcula Island, Croatia. First we identified the most common species of wild edible plants in the area. Secondly we made an overview of the ones that are overlapping with the edible wild plants in Brussels and surroundings. Thirdly, we went in search for specific plant-linked stories, traditional knowledge and traditional heritage. Sani Sardelic of the local museum accompanied us on a private walk through the inlands, telling us about recipies of local wild plants, linked to the food served on the Last Supper of the Christ – an habit that is annually revived by some of the Korcula fraternities. Medicinal qualities of plants were discussed, and furtheron we visited a local beekeeper with 80 hives, Carnica bees and wonderful salvia/sauge honey.
On the island are lots of melliferous mediterrenean plants, as erica arborea (tree heath), erica lusitania (portuguese heath), wild mentha (mint), echium plantagineum (purple viper’s bugloss), salvia officinalis (sauge), rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary), thymus officinalis (common thyme) and more … Especially the hedera helix (ivy), subspecies poetarum Nyman (balkans) is fully blossoming these days and is an important provider of winterpollen for the bees.
For now, all this information is archived in our mental database, and we are spinning on some experimental setups to link clocks, wind and time with longterm monitoring of several Open Greens.