For many of us, childhood holidays bring to mind a family-specific tradition that usually involved being dragged around a particular type of attraction to stop and admire things that interest your parents, things that seem entirely pointless to you aged 7 – brocantes, gothic churches, birds, classic cars… For my children, they will look back fondly at summers spent watching their mother take photos of plants in warm locales. My phone is chock-full not of my children looking adorable with ice creams and tans (although there are a few of those) but plants looking adorable, interesting or sometimes very familiar, but somehow rendered photo-worthy because they’re bathed in that very specific holiday glow that makes us all look like we’re related to Gwyneth Paltrow.
We have just come back from a few weeks in Southern Spain, which anyone could tell you is quite an inhospitable place to be in August if you’re a plant (and possibly if you’re a human). Yet a cool 43 degrees didn’t deter me, quite the opposite – I was enthralled at the bounty of botany seemingly defying the law of thermodynamics, and as ever in awe of the many ways plants make up our experience of a place and the fabric of our lives.
Here are my plants postcards from Spain:
Almond / Prunus dulcis
I’ve decided I’d really like an almond grove – a slightly more original riff on an olive grove (so passe), but implies the same sultry heat, dusty roads and meals that will forever be indebted to the fruits of your harvest. Outside our villa there was a lovely old Almond tree that was excellent to climb and had the added advantage of being a strategic position from which to pelt unripe almonds at your parents when they’re snoozing after lunch. We also got introduced to a delicious almond liqueur called Amarguinha, which was poured over ice, with lemon and a dash of soda and so refreshing and delish, but that did that annoying trick of tasting completely revolting when we got home. Almonds also featured regularly at dinner whooshed up with roasted peppers, garlic and oil to make Romesco for dunking BBQ lamb cutlets. Safe to say, I like almonds.
Stone Pine
Donada National Park is in the far south-west of Spain, near the Portuguese border and we spent quite a lot of time driving through it on route to the cool relief of the Atlantic in searing heat. Although it’s known for its lagoons and marshlands, in August none of these are in evidence, instead it’s a barren moonscape carpeted with what feels like the entirety of the global population of Stone Pine. Stone Pines are a particularly characterful tree – in youth, a bushy globe, in mid-age an umbrella canopy on a thick trunk, and, in maturity, a broad and flat crown. All extremely pleasing, and at this scale there is something of Dr Seuss about them. Jury still out on how well they translate to the UK.
Esparto
Esparto is a fiber produced from two species of perennial grasses – Stipa tenacissima and Lygeum spartum. The Spanish name for the plant is atocha and they have been using to make sandals, baskets, rugs and ropes for millennia. Today it’s used to make baskets (of the like you swan about in markets with one slung on your shoulder), but also in agriculture to harvest grapes / olives / almonds. A wide strip of plaited raw esparto, named "pleita" in Spanish, is the traditional mold for Manchego cheese. I also saw some amazing woven blinds, like a chunky woven rug, rolled up as a blind above unglazed windows at the Tio Pepe winery which were unrolled and dropped to keep rooms cool in the heat of the day. I was delighted to find that after 15 years of faithful service, my much-loved basket bag that I bought in Cadaques many moons ago, had a small hole in the scuffed bottom corner, giving me the perfect excuse to indulge in my second favourite holiday hobby, basket shopping. Still trying to work out how to import the blinds.
Rubber fig / Ficus elastica
This was a truly stop the bus tree. A tree that I dragged my children off the beach to come and have a look at and even they were impressed. It looks like something out of a movie, a tree that waits for everyone to go home and then comes to life and slopes off down the seafront. There’s actually a pair of them, and were planted in 1903 having been brought to Cadiz by two missionary nuns returning from India. You can’t help but be awed by a tree of such epic proportions, a tree that like every other plant once started as a tiny seed.
The majestic rubber figs of Cadiz, ready to wander off down the seafront (photos above not my own).
Palomino grape
Despite my well documented enthusiasm for drinking it, I have never really engaged with viticulture in any meaningful way. The grape varieties, the pretentious lingo, the complex science of terroir and ageing. Sherry however is a different story. Grown and produced in predominantly one area, (Jerez and Sanlucar de Mayor), the resulting wines – fino sherry and manzanilla – are a much more manageable endeavour. The palomino grape grows in the chalky limestone soils known as Albariza, which have superlative moisture-retaining powers, allowing them to store enough rainfall to nourish the vines through the dry summer months. The proximity of the Atlantic has an important role to play in maintaining humidity and moderation temperatures – a perfect adaptation of plant and place, honed and refined over hundreds of years. I have long been a fino-fan, and unlike aforementioned Amarguinha, it travels very well, and three weeks of really getting to know it has done nothing to quench my thirst.
Olive / Olea europea
And of course there were olives, thousands of them - in rows to produce that magical amber liquid that we happily slosh onto everything, and also the huge old gents parked up in town squares to provide shade and listen in on old ladies’ conversations. We ate them by the kilo - skewered with guandillas, on the beach out of cans with a beer, and in a kind of Panzanella with anchovies, tomatoes and stale bread.
Honourable mentions:
Geranium – in terracotta pots in white-washed villages, gaudy ones, delicate ones, all much appreciated and admired
Aeonium – I have always been a huge fan, and now that Sarah Price has put them on the map I suspect others will come round to their extra-terrestrial beauty. Especially as our summers become more like Spain’s.
Tomato – breakfast, lunch and supper. Mostly breakfast, blitzed and smeared on toast with a liberal slosh of olive oil and a café con leche with over-heated milk (for the handsome fee of 2 euros). Gazpacho also, lots of.
Plumbago - New to me, at least in the flesh, but was planted all around the villa, and also on balconies and sidewalks. Such a pure and uncorrupted blue, flowers not unlike phlox, seems far too delicate to withstand Andalusia in August but appeared to be extremely happy.
Plant-based recipes that I’m cooking this month
Romesco – Finca Buen Vino
Almond and roast pepper dip which is extremely easy, totally delicious and goes with almost everything – fish, lamb, chicken, roasted veggies, as a dip, in sandwiches… This recipe is Jeannie Chesterton’s, whose farm Finca Buen Vino, we got married at 9 years ago (if you want a foodie weekend away in Spain, you can’t do better than this).
2 garlic cloves, 3-4 slices of stale bread, 70g blanched almonds, olive oil, 2 large red peppers, 6 large tomatoes, red wine vinegar
Wrap garlic in foil and roast with the tomatoes. Roast / blacken the peppers over a flame, then put in a plastic bag to steam and remove the skins. Squeeze out the garlic from its skins, and put in a blender with peppers and tomatoes and blitz. Add crumbled bread and almonds, and start dribbling in olive oil until you reach a stiff but grainy mayonnaise texture. Season with salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. Keeps in fridge for up to a week.
Smacked cucumber tahini noodles – I’m obsessed with Mob, and this is one of many winning mid-week masterpieces I have been cooking on repeat.
Meera Sodha’s tomato curry – I think I mentioned this last year, but there’s only a few weeks a year when you can really cook this, so here it is again. So. Damn. Good.
Non-Spanish hero plant
Cotoneaster franchetti – I agree, not one of the plant kingdoms greatest lookers, and as a result much maligned and most often found in carparks, hanging off feather-board fences in ugly alleyways or used in an attempt to ‘green up’ a high-traffic roundabout… well now I know why - it is highly effective at soaking up air pollution. In just seven days a 1-metre length of well-managed dense hedge will mop up the same amount of pollution that a car emits over a 500-mile drive. 500 miles! So I take back my mean thoughts, another one to file in the extremely clever plants folder.
