Category: Flora of Mallorca

Herba de Santa Margalida – Centaurium bianoris (Sennen)

Family: Gentianaceae.Genus: Centaurium.General distribution: Mediterranean.Flowering time: May to July.Habitat: Garrigue glades, roadsides.Vital forms: Therophyte.Status: Endemic.

Fields full of blossoming almond trees (prunus dulcis) are a typical sight in Mallorca from February onwards.

Wild flowers. Mallorca’s fields and woodlands come to life in the spring and summer. The vegetation is typically Mediterranean, and we find many endemic species, including a great number of small orchids.

The rosemary is one of the more well known Mediterranean plants, thanks to its culinary and medicinal uses. This shrub is very abundant from sea level to mountains, in dry, sunny areas on calcareous soils, is woody, perennial and can reach 2 meters.

The Sea Daffodil is a bulbous plant which, over the autumn and winter periods, presents only with thick leaves twisted in a gentle spiral. They grow on costal sands or sand dune systems.

Characteristics:A perennial herb, with an underground trunk, it produces new leaves every year during winter and afterwards they dry up in summer.

Characteristics:An endemic plant of Mallorca, it can be found in garrigue clearings in the driest regions of Mallorca, in the region spanning between the extreme south of Marina de Llucmajor up to the coasts of Xorrigo, between 20 and 150 metres above sea level.

An orquid that inhabits wet areas close to the sea, can be found in flooded areas or alongside the borders. It is relatively large, can reach up to more than a half meter in height.

Arum pictum has large leaves like Arum italicum, but they have clearly visible white veins and a fine reddish line along the leaf’s margin.

Characteristics:
A perennial stoloniferous herbaceous plant, with leaves cordate and with long petioles, arranged in a basal rosette.

The Posidonia Oceanica meadows offer food and shelter to a variety of plant and animal species.

This broom is endemic to Mallorca, densely spined and in the form of small, round bushes especially in windy areas.

Characteristics: The Hypericum balearicum is one of the emblematic plants of the Balearic Islands. A beautiful endemic shrub that is relatively common to the Serra de Tramuntana, and less common in the other isles.

Perennial bush of the heather family – ericaceae- till 2 m. tall. Erect stems. Leaves in whorls. Flowers grouped in compact racemes with long peduncles.

The white rock rose has pink flowers, but the leaves are light green. It can only be mistaken for Cistus incanus, which in the Balearics lives exclusively in Menorca, however the latter has dark green leaves with a petiole; all the other rock roses have white flowers.

Wild saffron (Crocus cambessedesii.) is easily identifiable just by its leaves because they are very long and narrow, they are very dark green but have a whitish line running from top to bottom.

The chaste is a small tree, easy to recognize by its palmate leaves, with 5 to 7, very stylized lobes, green in colour on the obverse and greyish on the reverse. Flowers are blue in colour and emerge during the summer. Chaste trees live in moist soils and torrent beds, often in these latter just before the empty into the sea.

Brassica balearica is an endemism exclusive to Mallorca. It lives in the Serra de Tramuntana (northern mountain range) occupying rocky crevices in the rocky cliff faces of mountains, generally in shady places. It is characterised by its shiny, fleshy leaves with wavy margins which are concentrated at the base of the plant.

A small plant, trunk is woody at the base but branches are herbaceous. These branches are pilose, with lanceolate leaves of greyish or reddish colours. In the upper story the flowers are formed, with five white petals.

This is one of the most beautiful endemic plant species in the Balearics. The foxglove is unmistakable with its hanging pinkish flowers. It lives in rocky crags, often colonising the soil at the foot of mountain cliff faces. Varieties with leaves without hairs and white flowers have been described.

Plant that lives in rocky crevices and walls, it can be identified by its rounded contom and a petiole that begins from the centre of the lamina, at lest the basal leaves. The leaves and stems have an apple-like texture, as for all of the Crassulaceae; the stem leaves are dentate.

This small plant lives near the littoral zone, and it’s easy to identify when in flower by its violet capitula. Leaves are also easy to identify: wide and fleshy with white diagrams on obverse side and reddish ones on the reverse.

It’s relatively easy to find his fern colonizing the rock fissures or between the stones of a drywall, although with a shady and wet aspect. It is also very easy to recognize this plant by its linear lobed leave, which become smaller as you go from below to the top, when fertile, the obverse of each lobule are lined with orange coloured sori in two parallel lines.