The MGS Forum
Plants for mediterranean gardens => Trees and Shrubs => Topic started by: MikeHardman on October 23, 2011, 09:50:50 PM
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While on a walk today, I discovered the best area for wild myrtle that I have seen so far.
I was interested to see that plants were in flower and fruit at the same time. Meikle (Flora of Cyprus, p.659) gives the flowering period as May-August.
The foliage had something of the effect of Dodonea viscosa, especially where it was being backlit by the sun.
I have just one myrtle in my garden, bought from the Forestry station nursery at Stavros tis Psokas, up in the Troodos Mts last winter. I think I will be buying some more.
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Have you ever seen the white berried form anywhere on the island. It is not common but occurs in scattered locations on Crete also in mixed populations.
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No John, but I will keep an eye out.
Meikle, Flora of Cyprus, p.600:
"The whitish-fruited M. communis L. var. leucocarpa DC. is found occasionally in cultivation (Syngrassides 1667!) and in the wild (Merton 2841!); apart from the fruits, it differs from the general run of Cyprus M. communis in having relatively broad, blunt leaves. It would be interesting to know if this distinction always holds good and if the two Myrtles can be identified in the absence of fruits."
So I will try to remember to look for broader leaves with blunt tips, too.
I don't suppose you have photos which you could check for that character, do you?
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John & Mike, we do have the white-berried variety here in Cyprus, though not common. Judge for yourselves regarding the leaf shape.
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Oooh - thanks John.
Well, to me, those leaves do look a little broader. The leaf tips are not blunt; I suspect Meikle might have meant to imply that the tips were merely less pointed as a consequence of being broader.
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Nice picture, John. I have seen white-berried forms in cultivation (not on Cyprus) and as far as I remember they otherwise looked pretty typical - I'm sure I'd have noticed if the leaves were significantly blunter than normal, as then in my unskilled way I'd have thought I was looking at some completely different species that I hadn't seen before!
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Mike, That's amazing about the blossoms and berries coinciding. I don't think I've ever seen that... certainly not here in Corfu where they flower in June and have ripe berries in October. I've seen white berries on sbsp. Tarentinus, but thy're not a bright white, just sort of whiteish.
Something OT: About this time of year I collect the berries. I make a liqueur and a bread while they're fresh and use the dried ones for adding to meat stews.
Alisdair, this wouldn't be OT if we started a category of of Food from the Garden (and the wild) and possibly also traditional medicines. What do you think?
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Cali, That's certainly an idea. We have been trying to keep the number of categories down, though (at the meeting on Mallorca two of the Californians, separately, indicated that for them there were too many already!). So for the moment I'll start a thread on Food From Unusual Plants, here (http://www.mgsforum.org/smf/index.php?topic=472), in the Vegetable Garden section, and link it to your post on using myrtle fruits. And maybe we'll do the same for medicines and remedies from plants, in Miscellaneous. (I think we'll also change the heading of that whole section to Fruit and Vegetables.)
Incidentally, we do sometimes get a flush of simultaneous flowers and fruits on myrtles in our gardens both here in UK and in Greece, and we did see one plant carrying both last week, I think on the optional trip to Menorca, but possibly on Isla Dragonera - neither Helena nor I can remember exactly where we saw it!
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Saw a variegated cultivar in a garden centre in Paphos yesterday; quite nice.
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John, further to your photo of the white-berried var. leucantha...
I found the same cultivar in Polis today; a fair sized shrub, over 2m tall, covered in those berries.
I, like you, can't say I'm convinced about the leaves being broader than the typical species.
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Myrtus communis makes a very good low growing hedge when trimmed.
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There's bound to be some natural variation given the wide distribution of the species. The leucocarpa form occurs sporadically through wild populations and therefor I think it more than likely there will be just as much variation in all of this form.
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Georgios Hadjikyriakou in his book 'Aromatic and Spicy Plants in Cyprus' states that the white-berried var leucocarpa also occurs in the wild and is often cultivated as its fruits are larger and very tasty.
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Interesting, John - I might have to snaffle a few to try them.
I note the leaves are also edible - you can pretty much eat the whole bush. ...Which is a nice change from some of the plants being discussed on the forum recently, where it seemed almost every one you looked into showed-up as being toxic in some part or other.
http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/products/herbs/myrtle/ (http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/products/herbs/myrtle/)
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David, I find myrtle ridiculously difficult to grow - it sulks, it dies back, it has an ugly habit. Not one has even grown waist high in 5 years. An myrtle hedge would be an impossibility. Maybe it needs good soil?
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Fleur, how much water do you give your myrtles? How water-retentive is your soil? In the wild in Cyprus they are generally considered to grow in fairly moist areas. So much so that the older generation tended to regard them as a good indicator for the presence of underground water.
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Most of the plants I have seen growing in the wild were in favourable habitats with reasonable moisture. The best sites were in sheltered valleys e.g. the valley to the north of Myrtos, south coast of Crete below the Dikti mountains. Very occasionally it was in an unusual site where it can be stressed. One example is at the back of the beach in dune slacks on the north coast of Crete where it would have had to tolerate at least salt spray and also was growing in standing water which may have been seasonal. Here they only grew to about 1m high.
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So it looks as if we are saying "yes" it needs water! Well enough and isn't really a drought plant.
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I'm saying "no" it doesn't need water. All the wild myrtles on my property never get watered and flourish nevertheless. Some of the "nanas"" I've planted in "planned"areas often get some water vicariously just by being near plants that get watered once a week in the summer; they don't look any different from the ones that don't get watered except they grow a bit faster nad need to get more drastically clipped.
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Would you say they get any natural moisture where they grow or do they go through a period of real drought?
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No, they don't get any natural moisture, unless the slight (compared to many other parts of Greece which have none at all) humidity of the atmosphere counts as such.
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I always believed they needed lots of water, the only bush I have seen around our house grows in a place that seems to be regularly flooded, and I thought the place was constantly moist. John's question made me curious, though, and what I found seems to confirm what Cali writes.
The plant is highly drought tolerant. The soil should be allowed to dry in-between waterings. Tip chlorosis is a problem if the soil does not drain well , see (http://www.plantoftheweek.org/week125.shtml)
Water: requires regular irrigation; once per month or more, (http://ag.arizona.edu/pima/gardening/aridplants/Myrtus_communis.html)
Average Water Needs; Water regularly; do not overwater (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54005/#b)
Soil: Moist but well-drained (http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=1305)
Finally, Hilda Gildemeister (in Mediterranean Gardening: A Waterwise Approach) writes:
Likes well-drained, humusy soil in sun or shade
So my conclusion is: water is necessary every now and then, but not constantly
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I give half an hour drip irrigation once a week. The soil is good on top, dreadful and dry underneath. The best looking, but still stunted, plant is growing in stony terra rosa which conceivably holds more water than my more usual subsoil mix where the sad ones are. I think unaccomodating might be the best description.
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I don't think myrtle needs good soil, but it's certainly picky. It also grows much better with summer watering than without, at least for the first few years. In our Greek garden a myrtle that was irrigated for about five years but is no longer is now a magnificent specimen, covered with fat fruit. But cuttings from it (i.e. exactly the same genetic material) which we have grown on and then planted out in the "managed wilderness" part of the garden and which have had deep monthly waterings in their first summer but are now not watered are mostly slower to get going properly - they do seem to eventually. The ones which grow best seem to be the ones which start life with a bit of shade, either from neighbouring plants or from something solid like a wall.
Having said that, none in our hot Greek garden seem to grow quite as lustily as in our Sussex garden in the UK, which is clay on sandstone.
Incidentally, our subsp. communis has exactly the off-white fruits described earlier in this thread by Cali.