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FLORA DE AL-ANDALUS EN EL SIGLO XI, reportaje

LAS ESPECIES MÁS 'CANTADAS'

PLANTAS PREFERIDAS EN AL-ANDALUS

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FLOWERS OF THE POETS OF AL-ANDALUS

Plasterwork, poems and Islamic treatises are our guides to learning about the kingdoms in al-Andalus and to disclose the origin of the twenty-first century gardens in Granada.

JUAN ENRIQUE GÓMEZ & MERCHE S. CALLE * WASTE MAGAZINE
TRANSTALED BY: FELIPE BENAVIDES

“Andalusia and Spain have been nothing but a vast garden in which flowers and trees boasted the most seductive colours and their shadiest foliage”. This is the way the University of Algiers’ researcher, Henri Pérès, describes the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula, in his book entitled “Esplendor de al-Andalus” (Splendour of al-Andalus). He demonstrated how, for over a thousand years, vegetal species have evolved -together with human-beings and their cultures-, and how eight centuries of Arab presence in Europe are the origin of the majority of ornamental plants and flowers which are found in fields, orchards, and gardens, as well as agricultural and forest grounds. Some were brought directly from the Far East –such as palm and pomegranates trees-, others were developed, germinated by the people in al-Andalus -the Nasrid in the Kingdom of Granada, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Emirate and the Caliphate of Cordoba, and the Almohads in the eastern provinces.  

There are no Andalucian gardens left any more, but the plants which grew in them still persist. It is practically impossible to know all the plant species Arabs used in Spain because most of the agricultural and botanical books were burnt in the flames of the Inquisition. Others disappeared from the libraries when Andalucians and Moorish fled to other lands, but architects and artisans left behind the testimony of the existing vegetation in the engravings, the lush arabesques made on plasterworks in homes and palaces, particularly in the Alhambra and Medina Azahara (Al medinah Azahara -The Shining City-), as well as the testimony captured by poets on the beauty of their plants, their flowers, colours and scent. Their verses and poems which were saved from the flames were compiled by other writers in later years -even by monks in their monasteries.   

Pérès claims that it was from the eleventh century onwards that “the taste for floral ornamentation and nature, extends throughout all social classes” It was a time when mansions surrounded themselves with gardens and plants become more than just a source of food.

La represenación de flora ornamental es continua en las yeserías de la Alhambra.

Palaces
A walk along the gardens and the palaces of the Alhambra will suffice to show us to what extend flowers and plants were present in the lives of the inhabitants of al-Andalus. The plasterworks in the monumental ensemble are filled with representations of plants which are not designed randomly but are, instead, the reflexion of reality, such as the arabesques found in Medina Azahara, where the image of vegetation was the key aspect of ornamentation. Those who built it wanted to reproduce inside the palaces what there was outside them: the plants. Antonio Muñoz Molina, in his book “La Córdoba de los Omeyas” includes a poem expressing that aspect: “La ciudad de Madinat al-Zahra resplandece al sol de la mañana, entre campos de olivos plateados. A la sombra de cipreses y palmeras, jardines de ensueño rodean inmensos salones mezclando mirto y romero, adelfas y nardos, lirios y rosas en tapices multicolores”. (The city of Al medinah Azahara shines in the early morning sunlight amongst silver olive trees. In the shade, under cypresses and palm trees, dream gardens surround immense halls where myrtle and rosemary, oleanders and nards, iris and roses carpet the space with their colours of every hue). 

In the Alhambra, Arab poets wrote about myrtles, roses, pomegranates and iris, but they also described the infrastructures for the maintenance of the ornamental vegetation. Such is the case of the gardens in the Alhambra described by Ibn Gabirol:  «Y junto a los canales, hincadas, corzas huecas para que el agua sea trasvasada y rociar con ella en los parterres las plantas, y asperjar los juncos de aguas puras y el huerto de los mirtos con ellas abrevarlo». (And next to the irrigation canals, half-buried clay pipes, stuck into the ground, transfer the water which is sprinkled on the rushes and quenches the thirst of the myrtles).

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THE MOST SINGED SPECIES BY POETS AND CHRONISTS

A large number of vegetal, ornamental species -greatly appreciated now-a-days in the south of Europe- were brought by the Arabs from the Orient.  Abderraman I was the Abbasid Emir who ordered trees which did not grow in al-Andalus to be brought from Syria. He was responsible for today’s palm and pomegranate trees in what was al-Andalus.  The first Andalucian king, Abd al-Rahman, made clear the origin of these species when he metaphorically addressed a palm tree in his Andalucian gardens: “You grew on a land where you are a foreigner and, like me, you inhabit the most remote corner in the world. May the clouds of dawn provide you with coolness in this far land and may abundant rain always console you”. Palm trees are the most significant species of flora in al-Andalus, half way between agricultural and ornamental species.

Granado

Although it seems likely there were dozens of species to be planted in gardens and orchards, the lack of data means the list of confirmed species is not very extensive. Amongst those often mentioned in the Andalucian poems there are myrtles, daisies, chamomiles, violets, narcissuses, irises, mattiolo, wallflowers, Madonna lilies, and of course the pomegranates. But there are also more humble flowers, still of great beauty, such as the flowers of the broad beans.   

Rosa. Fotogalería

Rose

"La rosa muestra túnicas rojas, cuyo manto esta calado"

Red berries and seeds The pomegranate is the symbol of a kingdom and one of the plant species with a Syrian origin which has become fully Iberian. 

In the beautiful gardens in Al-Rusafa, near Valencia, there were pomegranate trees which had been sent from Syria by the Abderraman’s sister. A courtier in Medina Azahara, called Safar, planted seeds from those pomegranates in his orchard in Malaga, and when they grew he sent one to Abderraman. “The Emir admired his discovery… That species of pomegranate spread across the area and people began planting them in their orchards”, according to the chronicles.   

The poet Sad al-Jayr, writing about a ripe pomegranate, says: “It opens its mouth like a lion in order to show its teeth dyed in blood”

A purple mantle Roses are another flower coming from the East, at least the ornamental and cultivated varieties. There are also several varieties of the Rosaceae family which are part of the indigenous Iberian flora. For the inhabitants of al-Andalus, roses were the essence of their gardens where purple and white colours were predominant. In the tenth century, they brought the art of distilling rose petals, and in April they prepared perfumes, they extracted oils and made preserves from the roses. The Andalucian literature of the time describes the rose as a flower which “shows a red tunic whose mantle is soaked”

Sensuality They are a symbol of sensuality and summer nights. Jasmines have filled the gardens in Andalusia since the time the Arabs conquered the ancient Roman territories and started prizing them. It is a plant Andalucian poets describe in a very delicate, special way when they depict a pergola covered with jasmine: “It is a sky in which there are little white and silver shields and small lances…: they are silver stars”.   

+ info, file and pictures

Violeta

Violet

"Alas de mariposa teñidas con moras del jardin".

Violets also win the prize when it comes to sensual connotations. It was an already existing species to be found in woods and shady areas in fields and pathways, but Arab gardeners were the ones to turn them into the “flowers of love”. 

In some texts, poets compare them to the “traces of a bite on the cheek or on the breast of your beloved one”. Violets are cultivated by the hundreds in the gardens of Granada. Andalucian poets reveal great interest with the Viola odorata violet. They describe it as “butterfly wings dyed in garden blackberries” 

 + info, file and pictures

Narcissus tazatta, narciso

Daffodil of the poets

"Los narcisos son ramas de esmeralda que producen hojas de plata y para los que el oro acendrado es flor" 
"El amante y la amante se reunen en su color blanco y amarillo; lleno de compasion para los enamorados, se apresura a florecer en medio de las flores".

The most poetical flower, the one Anadalucian writers compared to lovers, was the hyathinth, Narcissus tazetta. Hyathinths are the first flowers to grow after winter, and they can even grow during that season if temperatures are not too cold. Merging several colours in one branch –as it happens with some species of narcissus- inspires writers, at least Andalucian writers from past centuries. “Lovers merge in their white and yellow colours”   + info, file and pictures

Madonna Lilies

Madonna lilies

"Son ojos de oro puro e párpados de perlas en una rama de esmeralda verde"

White goblets. Madonna lilies are “pure gold eyes and pearl eyelashes on a green emerald branch”. The white of the bell-like flower of the Lilium candidum, drew the attention of the Arab gardeners and they took care of this species which has reached our times being one of the most prized flowers in the ornamentation of gardens, as well as in homes and special events. The Madonna lily has its similarity with the coastal species, Pancratium maririmum, or Sea daffodil which grows on beaches and dunes in Western Andalusia: Motril, Adra and el Ejido.

+ info, file and pictures

Water lily

"Son botellas de cristal, se diria una copa de perla,  en cuyo centro se hubiera fijado artisticamente un engaste de jade".

In ponds we can find water lilies. It is a wild plant, coming from wetlands and lagoon areas which can be found all around Andalusia. Arabs extracted it from their ecosystem in order to embellish their ponds, as they covered the surface with their huge, green leaves on which the big, white flowers grew. They are home to a great variety of vertebrates, such as frogs and other amphibians, as well as invertebrates, fresh water molluscs, insect larvae and aquatic organisms. Arab poets said they were: “glass bottles… a goblet made of pearls inside which a jade had been artistically mounted in the centre”.

+ info, ficha y fotos

Myrtle

Myrtle, (Arrayán)

"La nube ha revestido al mirto de galas verdosas que tienen botones de azmicle y de alcanfor"...

"Su fragancia, al difundirse serena y alegra el animo, lo que puede hacer creer que ha sido cortada en el Paraíso".

The myrtle is one of the species which is always associated with Andalucian, Arab culture. It is also a wild species introduced, and later  “naturalized”, by the Arabs. They converted it into a symbol of their gardens. At present, most hedgerows in Granada are formed by myrtles, such as the ones to be found surrounding the Alhambra and the ones surrounding the pond in the Court of the Myrtles, which bears the name of the plant. The liking for this white flower species is shown in the texts of the poets of al-Andalus: “La nube ha revestido el mirto de galas verdosas que tienen botones de almizcle y de alcanfor. Su fragancia, al difundirse, serena y alegra el ánimo, lo que puede hacer creer que ha sido cortada en el Paraíso” (The cloud has sheathed the myrtle in green finery, full of buttons of musk and camphor. Its fragrance when disseminating the scent soothes and elates the spirit, which may well mean it was collected in Paradise)

+ info, ficha y fotos

Arrayán

Blue irises 

"Ha desechado con repugnancia el traje blanco, color de su hermano,

para vestirse con un manto azul cuyo destello parece tomado de la boveda celeste; 

si el pavo real se lo pusiera, seria felicitado como un rey por las otras aves". + info, file and pictures

There are blue irises as well as white irises. Some are wild species, others are cultivated.  As with other species, Arab gardeners in al-Andalus prized some varieties which have been maintained through the centuries. Some of them have even become present-day favourites in our gardens, parks and flower-beds. Blue irises, Iris germanica, were really cherished in the palaces. Amongst poets and botanists there was a curious dispute about the blue  colour: “It has rejected with repugnance the white dress -its brother’s colour-, in order to put on a blue cloak whose sparkle seems to have been taken from the canopy of heaven. If the peacock wore it, he would be congratulated like a king by the rest of birds”

+ info, ficha y fotos

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THE PREFERRED PLANTS OF AL ANDALUS

(Click on the names to go to cards with photos and data)

Aconito
Acerolo
Adelfa
Ajenjo
Alcaparra
Alcachofa
Algarrobo Almendro
Arce
Arrayan
Avellano
Beleño
Boj
Cedro
Chondrilla juncea (Achicoria dulce) 
Chrozophora tinctoria (Tornasol) 
Ciprés
Citrullus colocynthis
Cohombrillo amargo
Culandrillo de pozo
Encina
Enredadera
Escamonea falsa
Esparto
Flor del angel
Gossypium hirsutum (Algodón)
Granado
Hierbabuena
Higuera
Hinojo
Jazmín
Jazmin silvestre amarillo
Laurel
Lentisco
Limonero
Malvavisco
Morera
Naranjo
Nenúfar
Olivo
Oregano
Palmera
Papiro
Peganum harmala 
(Ruda de Siria, alhármaga, Catarrufín, Alharma, gamanza)
Pervinca
Retama
Rosa
Ruda
Rhus coriaria (Zumaque)
Rusco
Saccharum officinarum (Caña de azucar)
Saponaria
Siempreviva mayor
Taray
Terebinto
Toronjil
Verdolaga
Vid
Violeta Viscum album  subsp. austriacum
(Muérdago) 
Zarzamora

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Bibliografy:
"Esplendor de al - Andalus (Henri Pérès)
Plantas de las tierras de al-Andalus (Merche S. Calle)

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TEMAS RELACIONADOS

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Guía de Plantas inicio
Las flores de los poetas de al-Andalus
La Alhambra, Isla ecologica
El patio nazarí, la unidad entre naturaleza y arquitectura
Generalife, el jardín de Palacio
El patio de la Mezquita de Córdoba
Medina Azahara, Córdoba
La Alcazaba de Málaga
Salinas de La Malahá, Granada
Sotos de la Albolafia en Córdoba
Carmen de los Mártires Jardín de jardines
El huerto monacal / El jardin del convento Plantas medicinales, arboles frutales y ornamentales conviven en el jardín

PAISAJES Y BIODIVERSIDAD

Una serie de reportajes para mostrar la riqueza natural que nos rodea, sus ecosistemas y a sus singulares habitantes. 

Granada y las tierras del sureste de Andalucía poseen la mayor diversidad biológica de Europa, parajes únicos para vivir en tiempos de estío

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