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Alpines of the Mediterranean You may not think the words ‘alpine’ and ‘Mediterranean’ go together but there are two good reasons why they do. First, the Mediterranean region is surprisingly mountainous; for example, the peaks on the island of Crete exceed 2,400 m (7,874 feet) in altitude, with snow covering them until late spring, and in southern Spain, only a few miles from the coast, the Sierra Nevada rises to over 3,400 m (11,155 feet). The second reason is that the cultivation requirements of hardy Mediterranean plants are very similar to those of alpines. Smaller Mediterranean species do very well on a rock garden, where they enjoy the sunny position and free-draining soil. The Mediterranean Basin has a climate characterised by mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. This weather pattern is also found in other parts of the world. These regions are all between latitudes of 30 and 45 degrees, and they are on the western side of a continent. In North America, California has a mediterranean climate, as does central Chile in South America. In South Africa, Western Cape experiences winter rain and summer drought. Parts of the southern and south-west coasts of Australia also experience this climate.
As well as sharing the same climate, the plants from these regions also share adaptations to the long, hot, dry summer, surviving the drought in various ways. Annuals complete their life cycle during the winter, flowering and setting seed before the soil dries up. Evergreen trees and shrubs have leaves with thick, waxy cuticles to slow water loss, whereas other plants, like the wire netting bush Euphorbia acanthothamnos, are summer deciduous, losing their leaves when water is scarce. One of the most common adaptations is to retreat underground for the summer, either as bulbs, corms and tubers or as fleshy roots and rhizomes. Once the autumn rains begin, growth commences and these plants usually flower in autumn or spring. If you are used to visiting the parched coast of southern Europe in the summer holidays, you may be surprised by the green hills and wild flowers of a Mediterranean spring. The flora of the Mediterranean is one of the most diverse in the temperate world and many of the plants have been a part of our everyday life for hundreds of years. Mediterranean species have been spread across Europe by man, sometimes making their home far away from the climate in which they first evolved. The arrival of these plants in European gardens has not been the result of
below The Lefka Ori or White Mountains of Crete rise to 2,453 m (8,048 feet).
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