and more mountain tea..

And some more pictures of the Malotira or Cretan Mountain tea collection.. somehow I do not manage to get them in the right order, but anyhow.. this pictures just so that you can appreciate how difficult the collection is... and how amazing the nature...

Above, we are well back home with our collection, ready now to bunch them for drying.. so here we are starting at the end of the story...

and going back, we see the herbs in the sacks.. Malotira

Carrying the harvest down form the mountains.. if you look carefully, even trousers didn't manage the work....

above you see the end of the collection, closing the sacks containing the harvest, here we are at some 1500m altitude...

Collecting by hand...

A rest on a mountain top, a drop of water...

and walking...

up and up....

back home now, I am cleaning some soaps, the rest of the gang is getting ready to bunch the Mountain tea...

as you can see here...

This a picture of the last part of carrying the harvest down to the car below...

and carrying...

Oh, here some sheep on their way up.. but we were faster!!!!!

Cretan mountain tea, Malotira

Then we were out collecting the endemic Cretan 'mountain tea' or Malotira as the locals call it. Its scientific name is Sideritis syriaca ssp. syriaca. It is endemic to Crete, and even here it grows only in the mountains, at altitudes from 900- 2000m, mainly in the white mountains around us. Actually, the leaves you see in the front are Salvia pomifera leaves, the Matotira is just the flowers in the back...

However, the goats and sheep love it, it is a soft plant, doesn't defend itself against the foragers with spikes and spines as so many other Cretan plants. So one has to climb really high, walk hours from where the car reaches, and even then has to be lucky to find the plants intact.. And this year we were lucky. Since it has been raining even now in June, the animals find enough food at lower altitudes, so they don't bother climbing so high...

Our friend Dominique from Nomikiana came with us to collect..

Here you see the dirt road below, and the first plant we encountered..

And Babis on the way...