the vegetative mediterranean 27
A sea of plantsThe Mediterranean is an ambiguous place where, since the Neolithic at least, natural
and anthropogenic vegetation are hard to tell apart, and where both are extraordinar-
ily resilient and adaptable. The attraction of botanical definitions for the Mediterranean
derives therefore from their empirical definiteness: does Olea europea grow in a given
area or not? The classically Mediterranean, drought-resistant, evergreen shrublands
called by the Corsican-derived term “maquis,” for instance, do not grow north of the
45 º line of latitude in Eurasia regardless of altitude and, like the olive or, perhaps
even better, the fig or the strawberry tree, offer a clear way to delimit the region
(Zohary, Hopf, and Weiss, 2012: 129; Blondel et al., 2010: 58). But this tempting
clarity is deceptive: maquis cannot survive anywhere near that line in the Balkans, ced-
ing space to much more “continental” types of plants, and little maquis grows in
North Africa: the maquisard Mediterranean is thus robbed of its cartographic geom-
etry. Then there is the fact that plants shift their ranges over time, and not just because
people want them to: climatic fluctuations, for example, may push woods as much as
150 km per century in pursuit of good growing conditions, or to escape bad ones, and
weeds are proverbially quick at colonizing new ecosystems (Davis and Shaw, 2001:
677). The species composing a community may change too. Thus the drift of prehis-
toric migrants from Central Asia characterized the basin’s eastern botany, while in
early medieval Provence, presumably because of climate, fairly low-lying woods
welcomed into their midst beeches and other trees that earlier and later found refuge
only in the highlands, and deciduous oaks colonized the local heath. Simultaneously,
oaks retreated in northern Apulia to make way for ash and elm, apparently the locals’
preferred fuel (Blondel et al., 2010: 36–37; Durand and Ruas, 2004; Delhon and
Thiébault, 2008; Caracuta and Fiorentino, 2009). Diseases and the activities of
animals likewise modulated opportunity and catastrophe within plant communities.
Given species’ and plant communities’ accordion-like capacity to expand and contract,
with or without people’s blandishments, any historical understanding of the vegeta-
tive Mediterranean requires elasticity.
Traditional geographic descriptions subdivide Mediterranean spontaneous vegeta-
tion into five categories. These congeries of plants actually blend into one another and
may occur in tiny patches quilted among each other according to local soil, tempera-
ture, and moisture conditions, impossible to distinguish neatly on the ground. Color-
coded maps indicating where arid scrubland, coniferous and deciduous forests,
grassland and savannas, heaths (garrigue), and the famous maquis grow, or grew,
impose more order on the Inner Sea’s vegetation than actually exists, or existed.
The botanical categories aid as very rough guides to different plant communities
that have prevailed in different proportions at different times. They suggest which size
and shape of plants, and which associations, have tended to be most numerous and
successful at colonizing different landscapes. Yet every plant community in the
Mediterranean had to survive seasonal droughts and months of high temperatures:
available moisture and rates of transpiration were the key facts of life for quite dense
forests of tall trees, often oaks of various species and firs or pines, or more sparsely
wooded, grassy savannas, or the dense low bushes of the heathlands, or the scrubs
that grew scattered among rocks and clung low to the ground. Mediterranean vegeta-
tion has several methods of dealing with the predictable climatic challenges of