The hill of herbs

Secret beach 4/5 April 2013

 A small hill rises from the beach at the side of our parking space. I had to climb it of course. As it happened I could get mobile phone reception and send Zoe a birthday greeting. However, even that was not the real treasure of the hill. We had traveled along roads lined with fields of wild flowers, about half of which we recognised. We had a mountain walk through forests of fruit, eucalyptus and pine trees interspersed with disowned orange and lemon trees dropping their fruit around them. To add to the fields of flowers and forests of fruit, we had now found the hill of herbs. 

Enough varieties to make any gardener proud, they just covered the hill with a fragrant patchwork coat of plants. Not bushes, just low like healthy rock plants and easy to climb over. How come such variety is maintained naturally? If I neglect my rockery for a season it gets overrun by a dominant plant. We identified a few and photographed many of them. The collection no doubt includes species previously unknown to man (In the Neil Armstrong sense of the word).

photos....