Edible orchids are being overharvested in the Mediterranean – how to protect these astonishing blooms
Each spring, the meadows and hillsides of the Mediterranean draw tourists to admire flowering orchids. But in some regions, these astonishing blooms are steadily declining – or at risk of disappearing altogether.
Collection for trade is depleting these wild orchids. It’s not their flowers but their tubers that have most value. Tubers are underground storage organs that sustain plant growth and development. Harvesting them effectively kills the plant.
International trade in orchids is strictly regulated, although national regulations vary. Lack of monitoring makes it difficult to assess the scale of trade, but it is probably much higher than officially reported.
Orchid tubers have been collected from the wild in the eastern Mediterranean region – from Greece to Turkey – for centuries. Dried and powdered, they are the defining ingredient of both a hot drink called salep and maraş dondurma, a type of ice-cream.
Today, salep is not only available at local herbal shops and supermarkets. It is sold globally and online, causing salep harvests and sales to expand across a larger region than ever before. In combination with other threats such as climate change and habitat loss, this growing trade threatens to eradicate orchid populations.
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Using historical collections of salep kept in museums plus samples from current trade, our new study has mapped the species of orchid collected for its production, and their regions of origin, over the last two centuries.
By extracting and sequencing their DNA, we showed that the market for salep is not just growing – it is transforming. More and more species are being harvested across larger regions and during longer harvesting seasons.
From the early 19th century to the mid-20th century, salep was made predominantly from early purple orchid (Orchis mascula). Now, a broader mixture of orchids is used, including green-winged orchid (Anacamptis morio) and early marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata).
But early purple orchid is still collected for salep in Eastern Iran – a region where salep is not traditionally consumed and where orchid tuber collecting is a relatively new business. This shows that a preference for salep made from orchids and not substitutes persists. However, orchids are now harder to find, partly due to increased demand and possibly declining abundance of these flowers in the wild. As a result, the frontier of salep trade has been pushed eastward into new territories.
“In Iran, orchid harvesting is mainly for export purposes,” explains Abdolbaset Ghorbani, a researcher at Uppsala University and co-author on our study.
During fieldwork in Iran, he noticed that orchid tubers are not commonly known as salep but rather “mountain potatoes”. “This name was coined by locals in the northeast, as orchid tuber harvesting was new to them and most people were not familiar with salep or its uses.”
Our findings mirror patterns observed in Greece, where salep is now harvested less by local communities and increasingly sourced from outside the country.
At the same time, in areas where salep consumption is common, it is increasingly supplied through other means. People are not only turning to different species of orchid, but they are doing so at lower elevations than the traditionally harvested mountain species – possibly to make a wider repertoire of substitutes more accessible.
The risk of extinction that more intensive harvesting brings to these orchids can be seen in their tuber size. By measuring more than a thousand tubers collected over two centuries, we discovered that the size of salep tubers has been steadily declining, regardless of the species concerned. A reduction in harvested body or organ size is a classic symptom of overexploitation, and can be an early warning signal of population collapse.
Ghorbani notes that dwindling orchid populations may lead to a further shift in collection efforts: “I think that now, after some years, as orchids have become scarce in the region, the trade has also decreased.”
He adds that it is also possible that collectors have started moving into new areas, such as protected nature reserves, to collect orchid tubers: “Perhaps harvesting has expanded even further east into central Asian countries that have not yet been exploited, in order to meet the demand for tubers.”
If this trend persists, orchid blooms may become a rare sight not just across the eastern Mediterranean region, but parts of Asia as well.
Putting protection in place
To protect orchids from the risks of overexploitation and trade, orchid material should not be internationally traded without permits. However, trade regulations are poorly enforced and don’t address the problem of domestic trade. Increased compliance with international trade regulations is therefore necessary to curb the salep trade, but can only be a partial solution.
Other measures are necessary to satisfy the growing demand for salep. Consumers could turn from wild to cultivated sources, a practice still in its infancy but with a promising outlook for sustainable production of salep.
Sustainable standards such as FairWild can guide the legal harvest of small amounts salep that do not harm orchid survival. Both options depend on increased consumer awareness and the right market incentives.
As the trade and extinction of edible orchids is a global problem, effective solutions require international coordination. Global initiatives such as the Illegal Plant Trade Coalition can help disseminate knowledge of the risks of unrestricted harvest and trade, and promote existing alternatives.
Such efforts will not only serve to protect the precious sight of flowering orchids in spring, but also the treasures they keep underground – and the traditions they support.
Susanne Masters is affiliated with IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group.
Margret Veltman has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 765000 Margret Veltman is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group.