In recent days, the countryside between Kolymbari and Afrata has become filled with tall spikes of white flowers on a narrow stem which seem to rise straight up from the ground with no supporting plant underneath. While they almost certainly appear annually, their profusion this year is unusual, attracting the attention of tourists who have been seen photographing them at the roadside, and prompting us to carry out a Google image search to establish their identity.
The plant in question is Drimia maritima (also known as Urginea maritima), a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae, whose name is based on the edible garden asparagus, Asparagus officinalis. It belongs to a subfamily, Scilloideae (formerly Hyacinthaceae) and the species is known by several common names, including squill, sea squill, sea onion, and maritime squill.
In Greek it has many names including agiobasilitsa (the Father Christmas plant), agriokremmyda (wild onion), skylokremmyda (dog onion), and athanatokrommyda (everlasting onion). According to Greek Wikipedia, the first name is derived from the custom of hanging it over the doorways, windows and balconies of houses on New Year’s Day. It symbolises rejuvenation since it requires neither earth nor water to put out shoots.
The maritime squill grows in coastal areas at heights of up to 1,200 metres, often on sunlit, rocky ground and in degraded or desertified areas. In an adaptation to the Mediterranean climate where it is native, it has the habit of producing leaves in the spring and flowers in the autumn, remaining dormant during the hot summers.
The plant grows from a large bulb which can be up to 20 cm wide and weigh 1 kg. Several bulbs may grow in a clump and are usually just beneath the surface of the soil. In the spring, each bulb produces a rosette of about ten dark green leaves each up to a metre long. They die away by the autumn, when the bulb produces a tall, narrow raceme which reaches up to 1.5 to 2 metres in height, bearing small star-shaped flowers.
Illustration of a sea squill, from Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, published at the end of the 19th century. The image shows the different stages of the plant, including the large bulb and the leaves, produced in the spring, and the flower spike, which appears on its own in the autumn.
Medical uses
The plant has been used both as a poison and as a medicinal remedy. The main active compounds are cardiac glycosides – a class of organic compounds which increase the output of the heart while decreasing its rate of contractions, also found in plants such as the foxglove. The most important of these is scilliroside, which is found in all parts of the plant, though the leaves lose their toxicity when they dry out, and can be consumed by sheep and cattle.
The species has been used as a medicinal plant since ancient times. It is mentioned in a 16th century BC papyrus which is one of the oldest medical texts of ancient Egypt. Pythagoras wrote about it in the 6th century BC. Hippocrates used it to treat jaundice, convulsions, and asthma. Theophrastus was also familiar with it. Its primary medicinal use was as a treatment for oedema, then called dropsy, because of the diuretic properties of the cardiac glycosides. A solution of sea squill and vinegar was a common remedy for centuries. The plant has also been used as a laxative and an expectorant.
Use as a poison
The plant is very bitter so most animals avoid it, except for rats, who eat it readily and then succumb to the toxic scilliroside. This has made the squill a popular rodenticide for nearly as long as it has been in use as a medicine. The bulbs are dried and cut into chips, which can then be powdered and mixed with rat bait. The plant was introduced as an experimental agricultural crop in the 20th century, primarily to develop high-toxicity varieties for use as rat poison. Interest continued to develop as rats became resistant to coumarin-based poisons.
(Wikipedia)