Publication Name

BALKAN VITAL GRAPHICS

BACKGROUND

MINING

WATER

NATURE

Camomile summer

The Balkans are home to an outstanding number of

medicinal, cosmetic and aromatic plants, with a long-

standing tradition of harvesting them. The tradition is

handed down from one generation to the next and most

pickers know a great deal about harvesting methods,

which plants are picked and for what purpose, and the

best times to go picking. But such knowledge is declin-

ing, despite the fact that Balkan countries still harvest

high quality products.

The area is remarkably rich with the potential to play an

important part in the regional and global market for me-

dicinal plants. In terms of quantity, Bulgaria and Albania

are the two leading exporters in southeast Europe, the

former ranking among the top 10 exporters worldwide.

Harvesting wild medicinal and aromatic plants is also

a major source of income in rural areas in all the coun-

tries concerned. Lastly, the Balkans are one of the most

competitive sources on the world market.

However, stocks of many wild species have recently de-

clined. Some species are now rare or endangered due

to the loss of their natural habitat, excessive picking,

soil erosion and other factors. Protecting wild medicinal

and aromatic plants requires an effective management

system to ensure harvesting is sustainable. Among oth-

ers, the environmental awareness of pickers and their

understanding of the stakes needs to be improved.

“I didn’t even want to earn any money. I just

wanted to get my school books. Seven kilo-

grams of camomile was the price. Too high?

[...] Later I drank nothing but linden flower

tea. No use. First, I definitely had to get

hold of a good camomile-picker. This appli-

ance, equipped with a rusty iron comb with

twenty-nine teeth, was a primitively assem-

bled box. The wooden box weighed almost

two kilograms and could hold two to three

pounds of camomile. Full of verve I swept

the iron comb through the camomile, pulled

the box up, and about thirty flowers fell into

the belly of the wooden box. In three hours it

was full. My arm had long since gone numb.

I was breathing heavily, the strain made me

sweat and I measured time in camomile-

flower-gram-units. My summer was called

“camomile” and weighed seven kilograms,

from mid-June to mid-September.”

��

��

��

��

��

��

��

��

��

��

��

Translated extract from

7 Kilo Zeit

Rum-

jana Zacharieva