A forage through the fields of Cyprus

Mastic and mustard, sea squill and agave and cistus and meadow crane’s-bill. “This is chickweed,” says Katie Richards, pointing out a thin leafy plant. “This one is chickweed. Let me take a picture of it, just to verify…”

She points her phone at it – an AI-powered app called PictureThis, which “identifies over 400,000 plant species with over 98 per cent accuracy,” as per the internet. “You can make a really wonderful balm, and it takes away the sting…” she begins, waiting for the app to load – but the plant, it turns out, isn’t chickweed, it’s something called ‘dog’s cabbage’ (Theligonum cynocrambe). “I’ve never heard of dog’s cabbage!” she exclaims, laughing.

Katie isn’t always right about the plants we see. That’s partly because she’s not a scientist, just an amateur with a passion for herbs and foraging (and for “just learning,” she says) – but the more intriguing reason is because she doesn’t live around here. “I haven’t really foraged in this area,” she cautions as we set out – a party of four, plus two well-behaved dogs. “So we’re probably going to run into a lot of things that I’m not really sure about.”

57-year-old Katie lives with her partner in Argaka, near Polis – but we’re walking on a hillside in Pareklisia, just outside Limassol. You wouldn’t think it would make such a difference, after all Cyprus is tiny compared to her native America – yet our plant life is surprisingly diverse.

Even here, an hour and a half from her home, there are many species she doesn’t recognise. “It’s abundant with different kinds of plants,” she says of the island. “You can walk for just a few feet, and find 10 different plants. It’s really interesting, once you develop an eye.”

Admittedly, some are ubiquitous. Here, for instance, is calendula, the common marigold, which – along with mallow and mustard – extends across entire fields this time of year. If you find a field of them, “you can just pick off the flower-head and put it in a jar,” she explains, “macerate it a little bit with a mortar and pestle, then fill [the jar] up with olive oil”. You infuse the oil for a few weeks, add beeswax, “then pour into little tins, and it makes a nice balm”.

Or, for instance, helichrysum, also known as the ‘immortal flower’. “When they make essential oil out of this, it’s one of the most expensive essential oils, for some reason,” she muses, pointing it out. Yet “it grows really prolifically here, it’s all over”.

We walk for about half an hour, spotting something new every couple of minutes – admittedly, they start repeating after a while – and sometimes consulting the app, which has info on toxicity and medicinal uses as well as each plant’s various names.

Sea squill, for instance – a dumpy-looking clump – is toxic to eat, yet it has a diuretic effect and has traditionally been used for respiratory conditions, asthma, bronchitis and more. “But it says you only take, like, one drop of it. So it’s highly concentrated – that’s why it’s poisonous”.

Or take wood sorrel, also known as Bermuda buttercup. Some of her Cypriot friends like to chew the sour stalk, for vitamin C, but “it’s full of oxalic acid,” she cautions, which can aggravate gout and rheumatoid arthritis. “So I wouldn’t eat it, although some people do.” It helps to know what you’re doing.

Katie hasn’t written books on the subject – she recommends Illustrated Flora of Cyprus by Yiannis Christofides, for anyone seeking an overview – but she’s done some presentations at the Episkopi Paphos Environmental Centre, and has proven to be a popular speaker. (The next event is on April 4th; visit the website for details.) Clearly, the secrets of foraging are a topic many people find fascinating.  

That said, she herself doesn’t claim to be an expert, or a doctor, or even a herbalist as such – though she might use passion-flower vine in her own life, for instance, if she has trouble sleeping, or hawthorn for heartache or stress (“I guess I reach for it when I’m feeling like I need a friend”), or cleavers, also known as ‘sticky willy’ for its Velcro-like properties, for bloating and water retention. “Mostly,” though, “I just like to go out and identify the plants. And if it’s prolific, then I’ll pick.”

She doesn’t even forage in an organised way, in the sense of arranging expeditions like the one we’re on now; she just does it unthinkingly. Mostly she’ll be walking around, and “it’s kind of become second nature. When I’m out in the fields, I can’t help but look at what’s around me”.

Her son Declan – who works in Limassol as a social-media creator, and accompanies us on the walk along with his girlfriend Alla – tells a story of being on his way to a hike in the Polis area: “I was passing by in my car and I saw this woman, like, in the forest, on the side of the road. And I was like, ‘What is happening there?’. And as I approached, I realised it’s my mum!… She was foraging. She was looking for different flowers and herbs”.

But to a passing motorist she looked like some strange woman wandering through the fields?

“Yeah!” he laughs. “It was really funny, but I love that about her – I think it makes her a little bit magical, y’know? She’s like a forest spirit or something.” He nods affectionately: “Yeah, I think she is a forest spirit, in the best sense”.

Declan was nine when they arrived in Paphos, with his older sister Tara and their mother, 17 years ago. Expats have all kinds of reasons for settling here, but Katie’s case is unusual: “My husband had passed away a few years before,” she recalls, “and I wanted to go someplace with the kids that didn’t remind us of anything, for a while”. Cyprus was picked almost randomly, its obscurity – most of her friends in the US had never heard of the place – part of the attraction. “I didn’t think we would stay for more than maybe 1-2 years.”

She’d studied psychology, and done various jobs – but foraging had been a hobby since her early 20s: “I had a sister-in-law,” she explains, “and she was kind of a hippy…” It was sumac and elderberries back in Wisconsin, a far cry from the Mediterranean plantain and cistus (also known as ‘rock-rose’) that she finds here.

Cistus, incidentally, has “anti-microbial effects” and, taken as a tea, is excellent for urinary tract infections. One could also mention milk thistle – also encountered on the hillside in Pareklisia – which is great for the liver: “The seeds have silymarin in them and you can tincture the seeds, it’s really regenerative for the liver. You can get that in the pharmacy”.

This, however, is where we need to tread a little carefully.

I do indeed have some milk-thistle supplement at home, which I bought in a pharmacy – and, as I recall, it wasn’t cheap. A big chunk of the pharmaceutical industry would probably collapse if people decided to forage in the fields instead of buying medicines. Katie, however – who’s acutely conscious of being controversial – is quick to offer caveats.

Firstly, and most importantly, it’s not just the pharma industry: Nature, too, would collapse if everyone suddenly decided to go out foraging.

Again and again, she makes clear that you’re not supposed to uproot plants, or pick to the point of disturbing the ecosystem. “When we do it, it’s just a tiny amount that we take… I wouldn’t dig up any roots, so you’re not destroying anything. Just pick the top-area parts of the plant, if it’s prolific and it’s in abundance.”

Foraging shouldn’t be done in a consumerist spirit. We do find lots of edible plants on the walk (Naples garlic, bladder campion, asparagus) but she doesn’t pick any of them. Nature isn’t an all-you-can-eat buffet; nor is Nature a magic potion – which relates to the second caveat.

People want quick fixes and magical healing. Ideally they’d like to keep doing what they’re doing – eating junk food, spending hours on their phone – but add some herbal medicine, like they add an hour at the gym. Alas, it doesn’t work that way.

For a start, the remedies in Nature are “more gentle, more balanced… They’re kind of for maintenance, they help you pay attention to your body more”. If you’re actually sick, so-called allopathic (i.e. conventional) medicine – using drugs that often come from Nature but have been synthesised into “very concentrated form” – is bound to be stronger.

“One thing, too, that I’d say about herbal medicine is that it does kind of harness the power of – y’know, the placebo effect,” adds Katie – meaning that it works best for those who already believe that it works. “And that’s not to be sniffed at, because it shows you how powerful the human mind is at healing.”

Maybe so – but that’s likely to sound airy-fairy in a world of conventional medicine, where “you take a pill for this or a pill for that”. Some may also roll their eyes when Katie (sounding very much like a ‘forest spirit’) speaks of her communion with each herb, the way “you become familiar with it, and make friends with it. And you kind of understand that it has a consciousness too”.

Then again, Declan – who’s only 26, lest we forget, a digital native and social-media creator – later mentions how he tries to limit all his research on “what’s trending right now” to one day a week, then stays off social media altogether the rest of the week, for the sake of his mental health.

It may well be that Gen Z, who’ve grown up in our world – which is also the world of instant gratification, a pill for this and a pill for that – are especially wise to how empty and stressful it can become. “I think the most important thing,” he notes, “is just getting off your phone as much as possible.”

This, in the end, is the spirit of foraging – not just finding plants that are edible and/or medicinal (though that too) but experiencing the quest itself, the age-old adventure from a time before cities, let alone phones.

Some of the Cypriots at her last presentation mentioned “how they love to go out with their grandmothers and pick the mallow this time of year”, how it brings back memories and reconnects them to the old life. Even foreigners with no ancestral link can feel something, though – “because you’re out in the fields, and the sun is shining, and you’re getting fresh air. And you’re paying attention, y’know?”

“It’s more of an approach to life, instead of a regimen,” muses Katie, speaking of the way she connects with the secret life of plants. “It’s more of a holistic approach, where you’re being kind to yourself – and recognising that you too are part of Nature, you know?

“We’re not robots. We’re part of Nature too… And that’s why we benefit so much from it.” The walk is over and I drive down the hill, towards Limassol – the shocking unnatural world of car fumes and skyscrapers – my mind full of cistus and hawkbit, mastic and mustard, oat straw and tassel hyacinth, white hedge nettle and dog’s cabbage.