Autumn

Autumn - Winter - Spring - Summer

At the beginning of October the weather changes. The long awaited rain has arrived and has cooled the earth and the air.

In the Balearic Islands, especially in Majorca, we call autumn "The Winter’s Spring". In both the true spring, and the "winter’s spring", two climatic factors coincide. It is warm and it is humid. Under such conditions many of our endemic species, especially the geophytes, such as bulbs, and the summer deciduous plants, become active and produce flowers thus provoking a "second spring" before the cold winter sets in.

Throughout the summer, growth has been limited by lack of water and high temperature. All plants slowed down their metabolism for survival. Now autumn arrives, cool and full of life. Temperature and lack of water are, no longer, growth limiting factors. The amount of daylight plants receive is shorter, an event which triggers new growth and other changes in many of them.

How Mediterranean vegetation reacts to the arrival of rain and to cool autumn weather after summer drought

A self-guided tour of the Garden will allow to you find out more about this unusual behaviour. You will also discover the growth pattern and the role played by autumn in the plants’ life cycles.

OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER ITINERARY. BALEARIC FLORA.

Corresponds with areas M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, on the S.B.G. map.

This is a self-conducted itineraries through the Soller Botanical Gardens. You should follow the areas marked on the map provided. Remember: we use the scientific names for plants.

Introduction

Once the hot dry Mediterranean summer is over, cool nights and first rains activate all those species that survived the summer’s harsh conditions in a state of latency.

Plants take advantage of the new weather conditions, our "Winter Spring", according to their naturally programmed life cycles.

• Those annuals which have gone through summer as seeds, initiate their cycle. With the first rains, germination takes place and the plant will grow right through the winter, bloom in spring and bear fruit just before summer sets in.
• Geophytes, those plants that have survived the hot season underground (bulbs, corms, rhizomes), come to life in the autumn. In some species, flowers appear first and are followed by their leaves, which, through photosynthesis, will accumulate nutrients over the winter to allow the plant’s survival on the following summer. In others, the leaves come out first; now photosynthesis helps accumulate nutrients so the plants can produce flowers next spring.
• Perennials also take advantage of the new climatic situation and start a first budding season in the "winter’s spring". However, the real growth will take place in spring, thus avoiding the possible winter damage of tender new shoots, by rare frost or cold winds.
• Some Winter deciduous plants, such as the lime trees or the ginkgo at the Soller Botanical Garden, will loose their leaves in autumn, the winter temperature being too cold for them. However, we do not have too many examples of winter deciduous plants in the Mediterranean basin, since our winter temperatures are typically mild, and frost is rare.
• Summer deciduous are all those bushes and trees that loose their leaves in summer. In autumn leaves reappear to be followed, in some cases, very soon after by flowers, as happens with Anagyris foetida (Bean Trefoil).

M2: Femeniasia balearica

This spiny little cushion plant is native of Minorca and it survived the hot summer with bare spiky branches. Now, with the first rainfall, green leaves begin to unfold. Photosynthesis will help accumulate nutrients to allow a good spring flowering.

M3: Erica multiflora

The heather starts flowering in autumn, but at Christmas, we can still find flowers on the branches. Is abundant in all mountainous areas and on the garrigue, the low growth common to all the Balearic Islands. It can be found also in the rest of the western Mediterranean and in Portugal.

M3: Ferula communis

The Giant Fennel has a rhizome that survives throughout the summer in a state of latency underground. With rain, cool weather and shorter nights, leaves appear and grow very large. This huge plant produces big flowers.

M4: Arum pictum

Lords-and-ladies is an evergreen plant with big, typically variegated dark green leaves. It blooms in autumn and is characteristic of our garrigue, or low growing bushy landscape.

M4: Viola jaubertiana

This small violet is endemic to Majorca. It is protected by law and it grows in restricted areas on the northern mountains or Serra de Tramuntana. It is a perennial plant with shiny leaves. It reproduces by sending runners and by fertile female flowers which have no petals and which appear in autumn. Male, petal/bearing flowers appear in spring

M5: Sternbergia lutea

It is also known as Yellow Autumn Crocus. In the Soller Botanical Gardens it heralds the autumn. It blooms for approximately two weeks. Leaves emerge after the flowers and last until January, when the plant bears fruit. It is common in Majorcan gardens and often appears naturalized in the wild.

M5: Arbutus unedo

The arbutus or strawberry-tree, is a bush that can grow to up to 3 metres high. Its bark is of an intense shade of red and characteristically bears red fruit which are edible when ripe. We advise not to eat too many since it can make you dizzy, give you a headache or even make you sick. The name unedo in Latin indicates you should eat only one. Flowers appear in October, and coincide with the ripening of the previous year’s fruit.

M5: Anagyris foetida

The Bean Trefoil is a summer deciduous bush. At the beginning of autumn new leaves and flowers make their appearance. Eventually it will produce a pod not unlike the Carob bean, but the seeds are toxic and are emetic. Its name comes from the leaves’ foetid stench.

M6: Pancratium maritimum

The sea daffodil is a plant it usually found on sandy coasts. It is becoming rare due to its habitat being disturbed by bathers. This species flowers between May and August and bears fruit in the autumn. The shyno black, cone-shaped seeds measure 10-12 mm. Inside the seeds there are air bubbles, wich act as floats. Thus the seeds can disperse by floating on sea water and germinate in a localitation far from where the original plant began life.

Flora from other islands

M7: Limonium sventenii

Species of the genus Limonium (sea lavender) favour coastal zones and saline environments. They are known by the name of siempreviva in the Canary Islands. Species in this genus that grow on the Balearic Islands can be found in M2 and are called saladines. Endemic to Gran Canaria, Limonium sventenii has an almost shrub-like structure.

In the autumn, this species produces beautifukl deep blue flower spikes.

M7: Euphorbia atropurpurea var. artropurpurea

Purple-flowered spurge is a shrub with succulent stems and branches and is endemic to the islands of Tenerife. Its bracts - the leaf-like structures beneath the flowers - are purple, with makes it a very decorative plant.

Ethnobotany

M10: Strelitzia reginae

This plant's flower is very striking. It looks like a bird's head, hence its common name "bird of paradise flower" or "crane flowwer", referring to the bird that migrates in the spring. S. reginae mainly flowers from spring to summer, but its flowers can also be observed in the autumn. Indigenous to South Africa, the bird of paradise flower is widely used to adevertise the Canary Islands, and has even been called the "Canary Island flower", thereby erroneously being considered endemic to these islands.

M11: Ficus carica

The fig tree is a classic plant of non-irrigated sils on our islands. Moreover, it has become naturalised on damp crags and the bank of fast-runnig streams. Both its fruit and wood can be exploited.

The stems of this plant contain a type of latex, wich is an irritant and a traditional cure for warts.

The fig tree is deciduous, and when the cold weather arrives in October its leaves start to turn yellow and fall. When all the leaves have gone, the tree's twisted , curved, upwardpointing branches are revealed.

M13: Mespilus germanica

The common medlar tree is a member of the Rosaceae family and is indigenous to the central and eastern Mediterranean. It is cultivated on the Balearic Islands for its fruit, the medlar, which is edible.

The reddish-brown fruit appear in autumn anr are almost spherical in shape, crowned with wide-spreading persistent sepals at the apex. Moreover, the medlar fruit are only edible when they are over-ripe and have been allowed to soften (a process known as "bletting"). Before that they are too hard and acidic to eat.

The Mediterranean Basin plants now have what they had been waiting for throughout the summer: "the winter’s spring". Now you can see how, what looked dead a few weeks ago, comes to life, becomes green, and changes the landscape dramatically.

Come and visit the Soller botanical Garden, when the plants native to the Balearic Islands go through the cold winter accumulating nutrients, so they can explode into a colourful show next spring.