Lissos Landscape's Flora

Lissos Landscape's Flora

Between some thousand year old but proud trees, wrinkled by the winds of centuries of frenzy winds digging cavities on the rocks of the small bay of St. Kirikos, are some ancient olive trees swinging around themselves, which is a sign of the direction of high energy flowing.

Many plants live at the area and here below is a picture of a strange one which is called Dracunculus vulgaris, or commonly Snake Weed of Greece or Drakontilia, while its German name is Schlangenwurz. 

It is a plant that smells bad with strange flowers and leaves that were associated by the ancients with snakes representing the privacy of the underworld. Raw or boiled root was used in asthma, a cough, respiratory infections, fractures, and as a diuretic. The red berries of the fruit, leaves, and flowers are poisonous. 

The most famous pharmacologist of antiquity was Dioscorides. He wrote about this plant that heals ulcers, and also that if you drink it with wine it is an appetizing ... for love! The work of Dioscorides, “De Materia Medica” was free from prejudices and superstitions of the time. He had studied more than 500 plants and ranked them according to their therapeutic properties, depending on their action on various diseases of the human body. Until the 16th century the book was the bible of those involved with the Pharmacy. Translated into many languages it was the first book printed after the Holy Bible! The area of Lissos is full of herbs like the wild drakontylia, (dracungulus vulgaris) a plant of Crete which is considered sacred because it unites the worlds of the dead with the living. Its characteristic odor is so intense that you cannot stand it, within several meters. You might suppose that an animal died behind the bushes, but it is the scent of the Snake flower. Reminiscent of lily, only the flower color is violet - purple, while the green stalk has black stripes that remind the body of a zebra.