A Companion to Mediterranean History

38 paolo squatriti

cotton, which enjoyed more prevalence. But thanks to obscure activities on the Red
Sea docks, Mediterranean landowners had more strategies to follow.
Among the new exotics that made their way through the medieval Mediterranean,
citrus fruits and sugar cane are the most notable, though arguably rice and sorghum
had greater economic impact (Lagardère, 1996). The ancients knew the thick-peeled
citron, demand for which was sustained by Mediterranean Jewish rituals. But sour
oranges, lemons, and limes caught on in medieval Morocco, Iberia, and Sicily,
territories where their physiological needs could be met (with irrigation). Sugar cane,
also a finicky plant in terms of its moisture and temperature requirements, was harder
to grow. Processing it into a marketable commodity required much firewood, which
made it unsustainable in some North African cases. Nevertheless, in terrains where the
ecology was just right, for instance the Levantine coast, Cyprus, and later Sicily and
Andalusia, sugar cane became a lucrative commercial crop (Ouerfelli, 2008).

Conclusion

Even in the jaded twenty-first century, Mediterranean plant life can astonish. Early in
2012, marine biologists presented the world’s oldest organism, a 6000 ton, 15
kilometer long clump of sea grass that has been living placidly in the shallows of the
Balearics for perhaps 200 000 years. Several such patches have long inhabited the
littorals of the Inner Sea between Cyprus and Spain (Arnaud-Haond et al., 2012).
They are now rapidly retreating in response to rising water temperatures. These
submarine plants thus mimic the history of terrestrial ones. They link present and
(very deep) past. They change over time. On the land around the Great Sea, people
have for the last several millennia added directly to the panoply of challenges
Mediterranean plants deal with. But coping with both opportunities and calamities,
over the long duration, is Mediterranean vegetation’s specialty.

References

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