In search of Lesbians

Lesbos is the third largest island in Greece (after Crete and Evia), and the eighth largest in the Mediterranean; there’s a good pub-quiz question in the making.

But Lesbos wasn’t always an island. It was linked to what is now Asia Minor, and it had a sub-tropical climate, so perhaps it lay much closer to the equator? The land was covered in forest, which included species such as pre-historic conifers, giant redwoods, palms, large deciduous varieties, and even cinnamon (which is a type of laurel).

Twenty million years ago, a series of volcanic explosions flattened many of the trees, then covered them in ash. Even those stems that were left standing after the blasts were buried in ash. Then came the lava flows; anything organic that was not buried by ash was cremated. The trees covered by ash, however, were spared this holocaust.

Over thousands of years, the organic material of the trunks decayed, and the voids they left behind were filled with various minerals that had leached down and inside the tissues.

Petrified pine

Minerals have replaced the organics

Millions of years of erosion by wind, rain and sea have exposed some of these petrified trunks, and archaeologists have since excavated many, many more. Unlike the rest of the island, the western part of the island still has no new trees to speak of – it looks more like a moorland. The museum curator at Sigri (the westernmost port) told us that was because the volcanic material was still toxic to trees.

The volcanoes are long since extinct, because the Aegean’s complex arc of activity has gradually moved southwards, past Thira, and now lies at the latitude of Crete. But move east of this barren, fossilised zone, and Lesbos is mostly covered in trees wherever the terrain is not too precipitous. Much of the higher, steeper and more remote land is still covered in pine forest, albeit of an evolutionary younger species.

Extensive pine forests

The more accessible areas have been clear-felled of pine, and replaced with olive trees. It's possible that this happened mostly in the 14th century under the oversight of the Genoese, who first encouraged the industrial production of olive oil. The Genoese had been awarded this island, and neighbouring ones, after the Fourth Crusade.

The Ottomans eventually threw these ‘Franks’ off these islands, but the oil kept flowing and Lesbian olive soap, for example, was exported widely. It is said that there are 11 million olive trees on the island. And we witnessed a workshop where mature students were being shown how to clean sheep’s wool with olive soap.

After the virgin oils had been extracted by mechanical press, the producer then used hot water to extract even more oil. And the steam drove the machinery engines. This is why you will see many old chimneys dotted around the landscape, in abandoned oilve oil plants.

On top of one chimney, we were lucky enough to see a nesting white stork, ready to deliver a new baby to a lucky couple, no doubt.

A nesting white stork atop the chimney of an old olive oil factory

The only other areas without tree cover are the flat, marshlands at the head of the two gulfs, particularly the larger Kalloni Bay. Probably for as long as the olives have been made into oil, the locals have been using large, open ‘pans’ for salt making. I think this coarse salt helped preserve the olives, but also that the salinity helped the extraction of the oil from the fruits.

Old salt flats at the head of Kalloni Bay

Perhaps this intensive industry caused the decline in the habitat of the numerous migratory bird species that pass through? Many of the pans are now abandoned, and these shallow muddy waters, however, are still used by migratory birds, especially waders.

Alix and I spent a lovely couple of hours with our binoculars doing some very amateurish spotting. We saw more flamingos, black-winged stilts, avocets, shelducks, terns and a glorious black stork in flight.

When we had been in the Axios delta a few weeks ago, my ecologist, ex-work colleague Will, had told me to look out there for Dalmatian pelicans. We had been out of luck. But now I spotted something very large and bulky flying low over the water in the far distance.

We made a mental note of where we thought it might have landed, hopped into the hire-car and drove around the flats to another hide much closer by. With baited breath we retrieved our binoculars and stared out over the watery scene. Sure enough, not one but two of these majestic birds were floating around. They didn’t stay long. Even though flamingos can seem very incongruous on a Greek island, two large pelicans seemed even more so.

I’m not sure is these pelicans are resident or simply passing through? Let’s assume that they live here, and that we tracked down some true Lesbians.