Taking a walk in the Mediterranean Garden, the visitor's eye is immediately caught by bushes with vivid red colored fruits, and thorny branches, so strongly attached to each other, that they shape a net.
The Spiny Burnet is a native, perennial, low, cushion-shaped shrub, up to 50cm tall, typical of the phrygana scrublands and island regions of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. It grows mainly in poor, barren and rocky, limestone and silicate soils, in areas degraded by overgrazing or in areas that have been repeatedly burned by fires. Spiny Burnet’s bark is silver brown and peels in unsymmetrical stripes. The branches end in thin, sharp thorns while its leaves are dicotyledonous, in alternating sequence, composite, winged, up to 6 cm long and belong to the family of wild roses, Rosaceae.
Its flowers, male and female, are arranged along a common axis, forming narrow inflorescences, 2-6 cm long. The petals are scarce with sepals greenish or in purple shades. Its fruit is spherical, spongy, and fleshy.
The Spiny Burnet blooms from February to April. In summer the plant dries to survive high temperatures. It falls into a summer "hibernation". This feature allows the Spiny Burnet to save water. Along with the plant, its fruit dries, and slowly prepares to scatter its seeds in fresh soil, so that the new bushes emerge during the fall.
The Latin name of the Spiny Burnet is Sarcopoterium Spinosum. It is a true blessing for the drylands, as it holds the soil and feeds some animals, with its milky sap. It is also used as a touchwood for the fireplace, as well as for making brooms, while it is considered a plant with diuretic, tonic, and aphrodisiac effects.
Mythology wants the bright red color of the Spiny Burnet’s fruits to come from the blood of goddess Aphrodite’s feet, when she ran and stepped barefoot on the bush, in her attempt to protect Adonis from god Ares’s rage, thus painting the fruits of the plant red!
