Corsican spring rhapsody

Corsica in April is a wildflower enthusiast's dream.

04/28/2004
Corsican spring rhapsody
Arrêtes, arrêtes! "Stop, stop!" Denis is so tired of hearing me say--or sometimes screech--those words as we drive through the French countryside. And this past weekend in late April, we weren't driving through just any old French countryside. We had hopped on the last flight to Ajaccio, Corsica, late Thursday night, and spent the following three days plying the backroads of the south of that ferociously beautiful island.

Back in the States, all I really knew about Corsica consisted of one plant: Viola corsica, an intensely fragrant wild pansy that is native only to that enchanted isle. (I was successful in growing this beauty even in Indiana by giving it gravelly soil behind a retaining wall.) I was so ignorant that I didn't even realize that Corsica was part of France until I moved to Paris.

Last spring, but earlier in the year, Denis and I spent a few days in the north of the island. I subsequently lost all my photos from that trip thanks to a defective CD, and so wasn't able to write about it for you. On this trip, I made up for those lost photos and more. My only problem is how to organize them into enough articles so I can show you enough of them! The fact that we went a bit later in spring meant that I got to see way more flowers on this trip. I was practically ODed on flowers, in fact. I was taking lessons from Nature everywhere we went. For starters, take a look at the maritime lavatera (Lavatera maritima) and anthemis (Anthemis tinctoria) at left.

Those of you who read these pages regularly have probably realized how much I love wildflowers. I think I offer over 90 varieties of French wildflowers in the shop on-line section now. I was terribly excited to find a huge number of these blooming right before my feverish eyes in Corsica.

But in this article, I'm going to show you the natural tapis de fleurs--floral tapestries--of this enchanted isle. My beloved poppies were blooming everywhere, and keeping all sorts of company. In the photo at right, they are glowing amidst vetch (Vicia sp.) and corn marigolds (Chrysanthemum segetum). Note how the discordant color combination of red and yellow (evocative of a Shell gas station) is leavened into Mediterranean sunniness by the blue and violet of the vetch.

The same color combo is happening in the photo at right, with the blue note being taken up by lupines, in this case Lupinus angustifolia, which was in drifts of celestial blue almost everywhere we drove.

Nature can teach you to think about color in new ways. You might not think red and purple could look good together, but with the silver of absinthe (Artemisia absinthum) and bit of blue from wild borage (Borago officinalis), the poppies are like exclamation points of contrast in the background of silver and purple (right).

And while red and golden yellow make, for me, at least, a disharmony, red with acid yellow is absolutely exciting and very contemporary in feel. Nature does it again by mixing red poppies with euphorbia (Euphorbia helioscopia), a species known as réveil matin, or "morning wake-up" in France (photo below). This lovely plant has lime green bracts surrounding yellow centers and contrasting dark red stems.

Of course, poppies weren't the only show in town. Here, a beautiful symphony of blue, violet, and pale yellow is played by vetch and lupins joined by Urospermum dalechampii, a gorgeous big light lemon daisy-type flower for which I know no common English name. You'll get to see it up close in another article on the individual wildflower species of Corsica.

Perennials and annuals aren't the only players in Corsica's floral tapestries. Much of the zone between the beaches and the mountains in the interior is covered by what is called in Corsica the maquis, the local equivalent of what is called the garrigue in Provence. This is a community of very drought-tolerant shrubs and small, naturally dwarfed trees, many of which flower in the spring. In Corsica, this plant community includes several species of cistus, genista, lavender, oaks, myrtle (myrtus communis), and a host of other plants. The woody species of the maquis are the source of some of the world's most perfumed honey. In the photo at right, Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) and Corsican genista (Genista corsica) mingle their blooms in a spontaneous bouquet (photo below). Both of these plants, like many species of the maquis, are exquisitely fragrant.

Of course, one of the most remarkable things about Corsica is its incredibly varied terrain and accompanying ecosystems. The mountains that run the length of the center of the island are covered in glorious forests of chestnut, pine, and other species, up to tree-line that is. Corsica's highest peaks were well-snowcovered when we were there. These montane forests host a whole other community of plants, of which we caught only some glimpses. Mountain roadsides are covered in April with Cyclamen repandum, with its handsome tortoise-shell mottled foliage and delicate, back-swept blossoms of fuschia. One dramatic hillside surrounding a flowing spring was blanketed with these as well as white and sky blue 'Grecian windflowers' (Anemone blanda). I was thrilled to see this bulb for the first time in the wild (photo below).

This slope was scattered with clumps of purple foxglove which will take up the relay of bloom once the anemones and cyclamens have gone dormant.

Given the scores of times we had to stop for me to take pictures, we saw an awful lot in three days. I look forward to sharing it all with you in a series of more articles on the breathtaking beauty of Corsica in spring.

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Products of Interest:

Shade-tolerant--Purple foxglove
Average to dry soils--Dyer's anthemis
Average to dry soils--Wild red poppy

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