Bread ovens, BBQ area, rock-cut tombs? No, Roman beehives in Malta

Almost every guide book on the Malta makes reference to the Islands’ name as deriving from the Greek word for honey – meli – or land of honey, melitos, or even their later Roman name ‘Melita’, also meaning honey. It’s just as likely the name came from the Phoenician Semitic verb form malata, meaning ‘one takes refuge.’ All these etmyological threads are possible, but the idea of the Maltese Islands as isles of honey is a connection that we love. Certainly, guide book prose always says Malta is honey coloured, from its warm, yellow limestone and sun. The Maltese word for honey by the way is Ghasel.

But it took an early January walk in fantastically warm weather, high up on the ridge near St Agatha’s Tower (Red Fort) beyond Mellieha, to drive home the millennia-old link between Malta and honey. The garrigue landscape up there is covered in wild thyme; the hardy weathered variety that survives downpours, gales and drought. These bushes rarely get trodden under foot so grow into bushy mounds. Rub them and savour a heady scent that is to die for, and many a lamb has.

Roman Beehives
Now, bees loves thyme when it flowers deep purple-blue in early summer (end May to early July). So it stands to reason that where there’s an abundance of thyme, beekeepers follow. I’d heard about some Roman beehives near Mellieha, but wasn’t at all sure where they were or what on earth they’d look like. They turned out to be a stone’s throw from the road that runs the length of the ridge, but they are easy to miss.

Thanks to a helpful walking guide of the area I’d picked up for €2.50 from Din l-Art Helwa (Malta’s National Trust) which runs the tower, I did an hour-long, circular route passing by the beehives. They lie nestled in a sheltered spot at the mouth of a cave just below the ridge top. If you didn’t know they were an early form of hive, you’d mistake them for bread ovens or perhaps a dovecote of some sort. Sadly, it did look like some people had used the spot as a kind of BBQ area. But in essence, this cave apiary is how it would have looked in Roman times, when Malta’s golden nectar was highly prized. It’s likely that clay pipes with one end closed, but for some small holes, were placed in the alcoves. The door cut in the side allows access to the back of the hollows for comb collecting. Clay pipes hives were in use until relatively recent times in Malta.

Malta’s honey zones
Mellieha is renown even today as a main honey producing zone, and early in the walk, you pass around 40 modern hives. Other zones include most of Gozo, the isle of Comino, and Fawwara, just below Dingli Cliffs in the West. Today, there are only around five, full-time beekeepers on the Islands who manage an income from this ancient livelihood.

Beekeeping here today
But, things are changing, and several, like Nicholas Zammit in Fawwara, are very enterprising, bottling around 500 kilo a year, in nice packaging, and with new lines, such as honey and pistacchios. Honey hand creams and beeswax products like ornamental candles are now regular sidelines too. Nicholas travels widely to beekeeping industry seminars and fairs, in the UK and Italy, for information on how to broaden his scope here. He dreams of an eco-tourism centre near his small-holding to introduce people to Malta’s heritage in honey, as well as a small museum with ancient tools and details of those Roman hives.

Honey types
There are around 20 kinds of honey in Malta attributed to various plants and trees including clover, eucalyptus, orange blossom, carob and thyme of course. If you buy fresh extracted honey and direct from a beekeeper, you’ll know which flowers dominate its taste. Spring is for clover and wayside flower honey; end May to early July is thyme season; and early autumn is for carob honey with its dark colour and distinct aroma.

Where to buy
Some places for starters:
Airport deli shops (but try to buy direct from keepers)
Jubilee Foods
Nicholas Zammit, Fawwara, tel: 21 465750 / 9946 7712
Any local grocer, but it might not be the best
Road side stalls – watch out for honey for sale signs!

Useful Links
For a short background on beekeeping in Malta and those clay pipes, see beesfordevelopment.org

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Il-Mizieb: 20th century and man-made maybe, but worthy of its name as a wood

One of the most common observations made by foreigners visiting Malta concerns the island’s lack of trees when compared to their countries. To the outside observer, Malta appears as a treeless, arid landscape where even the few trees around seem short, stunted and windswept.

It was not always like this of course. Before the advent of prehistoric man, Malta possessed a rich tree cover, which was slowly but steadily cut down and cleared either for use as fuel or to create agricultural land. Today, very few remnants of the original Maltese forest survive, foremost amongst which there is the small oak grove known as Il-Ballut tal-Wardija which contains a handful of one thousand year old oak trees which provide direct continuity with their prehistoric predecessors.

Over the centuries, there have been some attempts to reintroduce woodland to Malta, with the most famous being that of Buskett, where the Knights of St. John designed and created a small wood in which they could hunt imported deer and boar. Buskett is today Malta’s foremost woodland and is capable of self regeneration, implying that nature has taken over from what was originally a man-made environment.

Mizieb: Malta’s northern woodland
A more recent woodland creation took place in the 1970s on what used to be an exposed ridge in the northern part of Malta, specifically Mizieb, lying between St Paul’s Bay, Manikata and Mellieha.

The ridge was extensively landscaped even through the use of explosives to blast the solid rocky surface so as to enable the newly planted trees to dig their roots deep and thus find sustenance and water especially during the parched summer months.

What trees you’ll find there
Over the past thirty five years Mizieb has thrived and matured and has today grown to constitute one of Malta’s finest stretches of woodland; well worth a visit and a walk in an unusual Maltese habitat. The site consists almost exclusively of Aleppo Pine trees, the Maltese znuber although one also finds other varieties of trees including olive and carob. The predominance of pine means that the ground is littered with a fragrant layer of pine needles.

Who maintains the woodland?
In the late 1980s, Mizieb was granted to the Hunters’ Federation as a location for bird hunting and remains to this very day under the Federation’s management. One positive outcome of this is that the place is generally well maintained and free of litter, although the signs of hunting activity are there for all to see: ranging from hides to spent cartridges. This arrangement with the hunters means that the place is to be avoided during the open season as there is active shooting taking place. Outside the season, however, it is open and safe. During the cooler months the place is also popular with picnickers, especially during the weekends.

How to get to Mizieb
The best way to reach Mizieb is through the road which bisects it, and which runs perpendicular with and links the Mellieha bypass with the Xemxija-Ghajn Tuffieha road. Where this road reaches Mizieb, there is space for parking with the opportunity of taking either the east or west entrance to the wood.

The east entrance leads all the way to Xemxija. You can either take the middle pathway and walk through the tree cover or alternatively walk around the path ringing the site. Both offer interesting experiences, with the former giving the sensation of walking through a wood and the latter offering beautiful vistas of Wardija Ridge, St. Paul’s Bay, Mistra, Selmun and Mellieha.

The west entrance similarly contains a number of pathways which either take you though the trees or else afford beautiful vistas of the Pwales and Mizieb valleys until the woodland ends in the outskirts of Manikata.

When to visit
I prefer visiting Mizieb between December and April as it is at its most verdant. The light of the low sun penetrating the dense tree cover, the seasonal flora (ranging from various mushroom types after a wet spell to beautiful spring flowers) and the sweet smell of pine resin are all experiences which one does not commonly encounter in Malta.

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Winter's crowning glory: the Cape Sorrel

One of the most common flowering plants at the moment is the Cape Sorrel which grows abundantly in most types of ground.  This plant is so well spread in Malta that one would automatically assume it’s a native species.  The truth, however, is that it’s only been on the Islands for two hundred years.

The Maltese call the Cape Sorrel Haxixa Ngliza; literally, the English plant.  It is also called Qarsu from the Maltese word for sour, due to the sour-taste of its stalk which can be chewed for an acidic sensation.  The plant is in fact a strong source of oxalic acid.

The Cape Sorrel which we today take so for granted as part of our winter landscape, is in fact of South African origin from the Cape area.  This area, source of so many modern day quality wines, boasts a Mediterranean climate which makes one understand why the Cape Sorrel adapted so easily to the Maltese environment.

Why do we call this plant the “English Plant”?  According to tradition, the plant was introduced to Malta in the first years of British rule by an English lady who was convinced of its ornamental qualities.  The lady gave a few samples to the curator of the Argotti Botanical Gardens in Floriana but the plant subsequently escaped from the gardens and proceeded to spread across the Maltese countryside at a very fast pace.  So fast was its spread that within a few decades it had established itself as Malta’s foremost wild plant, surpassing the local crown daisy.

As if this was not enough, the plant eventually also managed to escape from Malta and spread along the entire Mediterranean basin and up the Atlantic coast of Europe to colonise even parts of South Devon in the United Kingdom!  It is an amazing fact when one considers that a few samples from South Africa that managed to take root in Floriana eventually spread over such a huge territory.  All the European Cape Sorrels in existence today may lay claim to being relatives of the Floriana specimens originally introduced by the English lady two hundred years ago.

Another interesting observation relating to the Cape Sorrels of Maltese origin is that since the original specimens introduced by the lady were all of the same gender, the plants only reproduce asexually, that is without producing seeds.  The Cape Sorrel in Malta, the Mediterranean and Europe in fact only reproduces through bulbs of the same gender as the original.

The Haxixa Ngliza is so common that one rarely ever stops to notice it.  In some places it literally forms carpets of delicate flowers that light up in a fluorescent yellow once bathed in sunlight.  The flowers close at night to reopen again once in the sun’s rays.  It is at its peak from late December to February.  So do stop and have a good look at this unassuming invader which has so easily established itself as part of our natural landscape, and which has used this small archipelago as a springboard to launch an even bigger colonisation of an entire region!

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Poinsettias: thriving outside in Malta, but not on our hall tables!

When I first moved into my renovated farmhouse, a huge poinsettia flopped over the rubble wall from the neighbouring, semi-wild garden of a disused palazzo. For two years, its stunning flame-red leaves (bracts) did the business at Christmas and far surpassed the hot-house varieties available in the garden centres.

Sadly, by year three in our home, the grand house next door was purchased and the old garden ripped out to make way for a pool. The pool-side facilities’ building now stands where the straggly poinsettia once did. I’ve planted a flame-red bougainvillea up my side now, and it too is in flower for Christmas, but somehow it’s not the archetypal festive flower that the poinsettia is.

But drive around Malta at Christmas time and you’ll find many small front yard gardens with poinsettias. They’ve become a popular frontage feature, and have quite taken hold, even in rougher waste grounds near residential areas. It is currently vying for our attention alongside myriad ‘Santas’ climbing in through balconies!

Come to the islands other times in the year though, and you wouldn’t notice the almost bare, somewhat ungainly branches of this overgrown bush cum small tree. It’s not very pretty when not in flower.

But today, let’s hear it for Malta’s splendid non-native flower as it’s often called the ‘Star of Bethlehem’. In its native Mexico and Guatemala it’s known as ‘Noche Buena’, meaning Christmas Eve. Although in Spain, it has shifted religious festival as it’s called “Flor de Pascua”, meaning Easter flower.

If you’ve a potted one on your hall table, then good luck in keeping it alive throughout the 12 days of Christmas. It takes skill to keep it moist, but not too moist, and not let it dry out. Mine has already yellowed and dropped leaves. So I mourn the loss of my neighbour’s poinsettia that never was to grace her garden at Christmas, as it once did mine…

Photo: Robert Simmons

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Autumn colours to admire, but in Malta we do more with pumpkin than decorate with it

It’s the run-up week to Halloween, not that it’s celebrated much in Malta. It is a bit fun for some before the religious remembrance days of All Saints on 1 November and All Souls a day later. But its Pagan origin does not detract from its appeal to first graders at school, and to some stationers and corner shops trying to sell seasonal paraphernalia. And of course, as befits the time of year and celebration (of whatever), pumpkins are heaped high in veggie shops and supermarkets once more, in eye-catching displays of robust golds, orange and russet.

For all its seasonal allure, the pumpkin is actually on offer all year round in Malta, and pretty much a staple, fail-safe vegetable season in, season out. True, it lends itself better to autumn-winter fare (soups, added to stews, and so on) but it’s just as available in peak summer in 40°C. It’s also everywhere; if you’re out and about in the countryside, you’re bound to come across roofs and walls with pumpkins lined up, picturesquely ripening in the sun.

The beauty of the pumpkin, despite being a rather bland veg, is that it’s cheap. Right now, it’s a snip at the price at 70c/kilo, which is a fraction of one I saw on sale in the UK last autumn. The Maltese actually eat pumpkin a lot, so it’s not sold at a premium lantern-making price – yet.

So, what is it turned into here? Well, Qargha (Maltese for not only pumpkin, but gourd and marrow as well) is a basic veg, so it dominates the medley that goes into Minestra (minestone), which is a regular, traditional lunchtime filler for many families. Pumpkin comes in both white (qargha torka) and orange (qargha hamra) fleshed varieties and adds bulk, and colour to stew (stuffat tal-Qargha Hamra). Occasionally, it’s made into pies, and among cognoscenti of celebrity chefs from beyond these shores, it’s turned into a mean risotto.

The small, rural locality of Manikata, in the North-West of Malta, holds an Annual Pumpkin Fair. It could be the place to work out what to do with pumpkin beyond making soup! The event, which starts at 10.30, Sunday 1 November, is run by the Manikata Farmer’s Cooperative; see their website for full details. The fair should prove an authentically seasonal outing for the kids this coming half term!

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Nature's harvest and a field of gold

Following a few weeks of generous rainfall, the transformation of the Maltese countryside is now almost complete. A carpet of green covers the open ground as memories of the scorching summer fade and cooler temperatures set in.

The Maltese countryside is awakening and over the coming months will be rewarding us with wave after wave of plants which follow each other with clockwork precision. Each plant becomes the dominant species for a predetermined time, until it fades and is replaced by the next in line.

Considering the relative ease with which most Maltese can enjoy the Islands’ countryside, it’s incredible how ignorant we are about the main plant species that dominate our landscape, many of which we disparagingly group under the horrible Maltese phrase, haxix hazin or weeds. Close observation will reward the keener eyes among us with the rich variety of our nature. A Finnish friend of mine finds it amazing that the exotic herbs which he buys in the shops back home grow wild and ignored on Maltese country lanes and even pavements!

One such plants is wild rucola, rendered popular by the world’s love affair with Italian cuisine. Many of us purchase the plant’s leaves, duly imported from Italy, from the supermarkets and are little aware that our countryside is literally teeming with this plant for most of the year from October onwards.

The proper nomenclature of wild rucola is Perennial Wall-Rocket and it is known in Maltese as Gargir isfar. It is an erect mustard-like plant with many branching stems that may exceed half a metre. It grows in clumps on the ground in a variety of habitats and is very commonly found on roadsides and disturbed fields. It has long leaves as described by its Latin name Diplotaxis tenuifolia where the latter term literally translates into “slender leaf”. The foliage of the wild rucola is aromatic when crushed. On top of the branches of the stem are bright yellow flowers with four rounded petals each about one centimetre long.

The leaves of the plant are often are used as an ingredient for salads, although they are considered too strong to be consumed on their own, and are generally tossed with other leaves. It seems to be very well adapted to harsh and poor soils, hence its prevalence all over the Maltese countryside. This species has succulent leaves and is much appreciated in cuisine.

In some areas in Italy, the plant is also cultivated, but it is mostly collected from the wild and sold in small bunches in local markets. The only health warning I have ever encountered with regard to this plant is that it is not to be consumed in large quantities because of a presumably high concentration of nitrates. The most brilliant fact about this plant is that it remains present in the wild between October and the advent of summer, so there is always a fresh supply of its leaves available.

Look for it when you’re walking in the countryside and when you see how much of it there is around, you’ll wonder how you’ve managed to miss it all these years.

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Filfla, finally left alone by man

Look for information about the Maltese Islands and you will invariably be told that Malta is an archipelago comprising five main islands and a host of smaller rocky outcrops. The islet of Filfla is usually found at the tail end of the five, following Malta, Gozo, Comino and Cominotto.

Filfla is a rocky outcrop some seven kilometres to the south-west of Malta and is visible from long stretches of the south-western coastline, especially from Dingli Cliffs. It is linked to the Maghlaq Fault on the main island of Malta and may have been joined to the mainland in the past. Its distinctive plateau shape makes it intriguing, while its distance from the mainland shrouds it in an air of mystery. It is easily visible from two prehistoric temples – Hagar Qim and Mnajdra – and may have influenced Neolithic man’s choice of temple site.

The name Filfla derives from the Arabic filfel which means chilli and is described in some old texts and maps as Piper, Latin for chilli or pepper. The name is mostly probably attributable to its shape given that, with a miniscule two hectares of surface area, it is unlikely to have ever been inhabited or cultivated. You’d be hard pressed to see it as chilli-shaped today; but there’s an explanation for that…

The islet used to be slightly larger and more solid than it appears today, but was pounded to rubble following years of being used for gunnery target practice by the British Royal Navy during the twentieth century.

In spite of its small size, Filfla is a natural haven and plays host to two endemic species of lizard and snail not found anywhere else on the planet. Amazingly, it also supports one of the largest known colonies (five to eight thousand pairs) of the European Storm Petrel, Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis: quite an achievement for an island the size of two football pitches. For the past couple of decades, it has enjoyed the status of ’site of scientific importance’ and is strictly off limits to visitors: a fitting culmination following the depredations it has suffered at the hands of man.

According to some sources the island used to contain a chapel built in 1343 which also maintained provisions for fishermen stranded in bad weather. The chapel was allegedly destroyed in an earthquake in 1856 with all traces disappearing in the bombings that ensued.

So, when in the South West of Malta, do stop and have a long look at Filfla. As in many others things in Malta, it is the ultimate proof that size does not matter, and that even the most negligible of rocky outcrops over here has a larger than life role both in terms of its natural and its historical attributes!

Photo: Leslie Vella.

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