The Greek Herbalist with Maria Christodoulou

In this episode Jason König interviews Maria Christodoulou about her work as a herbalist and about the mountain plants of Greece.

Maria is a clinical herbalist. She runs ancient herbal medicine courses and herbal tours around Greece. Her book Herbs of Greece: Four Seasons of Ancient Plants for Modern Health is forthcoming with Timber Press in 2027. You can see more about Maria's work at her website.

We talk first about Maria's experience of moving to Greece as an adult, encountering a landscape she had heard about from a distance throughout her childhood.

Maria then talks about the educational goals at the heart of her work as The Greek Herbalist, and her interest in the continuities between ancient and modern botanical knowledge. She gives us a glimpse of the research processes involved in her forthcoming book, which has involved immersing herself in the work of the ancient medical writer Dioscorides and travelling around Greece to find photos of all fifty of her plants.

Maria then offers two case studies from the mountains, discussing the physiological effects and cultural significance of hellebore and mountain tea, and their role in ancient scientific writing.

Finally Maria offers some reflections on the threats facing the botanical heritage of the Greek mountains, from over-development, and on why education matters for helping people to understand and protect these places.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the Mountains of Greece podcast series. This is part of the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures podcast project. These interviews follow up on a recent Mountains of Greece conference held at the British School at Athens in October 2025. The goal of the project is to explore a wide range of stories from people working on different aspects of mountain heritage in Greece. Involves thinking about the past, but also thinking about the future. How can we find new ways of engaging with history, heritage, and conservation in the mountain landscapes of Greece? How can we ensure a sustainable approach to environmental and cultural preservation? I'm Jason Koenig from the University of St. Andrews. It's a great pleasure today to welcome Maria Christalulu. Maria was co-organized actually of our conference in Athens. She'll be joining as co-interviewer for some of these podcasts. But for today, we're going to be turning the tables and asking Maria to tell her story. Maria is a clinical herbalist specializing in the plants of Greece. You can see more about Maria's work at her website, thegreekherbalist.com. You can follow the links in the episode notes if you want to learn more. Maria runs tours across Greece. And her book, The Greek Herbalist, 50 Medicinal Plants from Ancient Greece to Modern Health, is forthcoming with Timber Press in 2027. I think we're going to be getting a sneak preview of a few sections from that today. Welcome, Maria. It's great to have the chance to talk to you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

I wonder whether we could start just with a bit of general introduction on how your interest in the plants of Greece developed and how you ended up doing what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Sure. So I started off my career in the nonprofit field, which has nothing to do with plants. But after more than a decade of working in offices, I just found myself wanting to spend more time outside. So I slowly transitioned my career. I enrolled in an herbal program in New York. And once I completed the program, I was considered a clinical herbalist and I could practice clinical herbalism. And the pandemic hit. And at that point, I had finished the program and I was exploring my options as an herbalist. And I had a light bulb moment where I was thinking about my university education many years prior, where I studied ancient Greek history. And I decided that I still wanted to learn more about ancient Greek history. So I combined my education and herbalism and started exploring medicinal plants in Greek antiquity. And so this the story continued from there. I developed the Greek herbalist and I really shifted my life to a different work. So now I can be outside and enjoy it and have this as my profession. And I also learned about plants that we use every day and how we can use them in ways that are good for our health and our well-being. So I also became healthier as a result of studying medicinal plants. It was a win-win situation. And I live in Athens. I moved here four and a half years ago from New York. And since then I've been exploring the Greek landscape, leading workshops and tours and all sorts of activities with people who come visit. So it's been an exciting journey.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

I know you've got family links with Greece, but you didn't grow up in Greece. What was it like moving to Athens as an adult? Did you visit Greece at all as a child, or was that just something you experienced as an adult?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So both my parents were born in Lesbos, and I actually didn't come to Greece until I was a teenager for the first time. So I went to Lesbos to visit my grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. So that was a very significant moment in my life, you know, visiting the home village of my parents and my relatives who I'd never met before. And learning about my heritage, it was interesting. Also because the landscape was not at all what I had expected it to be. So many islands in Greece are actually very bare. They're mountainous, they're rocky, they're rugged, it's hot in the summer. You know, I come from the United States, the Northeast, where there's trees everywhere. And all of a sudden I'm in a landscape and I'm like, where am I? Where what is this? Because you think of Greece and you think of, you know, people come here for a vacation, they go to the beach, and you just think of a more lush landscape. And most of the islands are not like that. So it was definitely a significant moment where I thought, okay, this is interesting. And then moving to Athens, I had been to Athens before as a study abroad student in college. So I was familiar with the city and it grew on me. Greece and the landscape grew on me as a college student when we traveled across Greece to visit different archaeological sites. So moving to Athens as an adult wasn't extremely difficult because I was already familiar with it. And it just took the adjustment of living in another country and learning how things function here.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

That's really interesting hearing what you say about that experience of encountering a landscape that you have heard a lot about, but that then ends up not matching your expectations in some way.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

That initial impression of barrenness, I guess, which then I guess falls away as you start to understand the richness of those landscapes more and more.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, amazing. So could you tell us a bit more about what you do in the Greek herbalist? Excuse my English pronunciation with the H sound at the beginning. What are your goals with the work that you do there?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

So I have developed online courses. I am a writer. I'm working on a book. I offer tours throughout Greece, botanical hikes, plant walks. So really the main goal and the main point of my work is education, teaching, immersive experiences. It's been a journey to learn this content myself. I've had to read a lot of dense academic books about medicinal plant use in rituals or the depiction of plants in artwork from antiquity. And then also reading ancient medical texts, which has been enlightening and has shown me that some practices from antiquity have continued today, while other practices have not. And, you know, why not? Why don't we still do some of these remedies and things like that? And I talk about that in my book. But overall, my goals are to really educate people when they come to Greece that Greece is not just a vacation spot on the beach, but also offers a lot of different experiences with the plants here, the mountain landscape where a lot of these plants grow, and reviving some of this knowledge that we had in the past that we've lost. So, what were some of the myths associated with some of these plants? And what were some of the medicinal uses? And can some of these ancient medicinal uses drive our curiosity to explore modern uses, whether that's through home use when it's safe, or through pharmaceutical studies?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Great. Yeah, and I was going to ask about how mountains fit in with all of that, but you kind of answered that already. But I mean, the answer presumably is just that many of the plants that you work on and are interested in growing mountain landscapes.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, it's very impressive, actually. So Greece is 80% mountainous. Plants that grow on mountains tend to have high therapeutic value because the conditions that they grow are very harsh. And it's become some plants that I'll talk about in a little bit have become endangered because of over harvesting, overgrazing by animals, or overdevelopment. There's been a lot of building development, whether that's for tourism or installation of wind turbines on mountains. So there's not a lot of environmental protections for the botanical legacies of Greece, which is unfortunate. But the mountain landscape is very important in the botanical legacies from antiquity and today. So this is where the plants primarily grow.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Thanks. Yeah, we might come back to some of those challenges towards the end. But let's move on a little bit to talk a bit more about the book. Obviously, I don't want to ask you to give away any secrets, but I'm very lucky, I should say, to have to have had some sneak previews of the book, which I'm really excited to see it on the way out to publication next year. But I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about what writing that book has involved. Clearly, lots of research, lots of library time, lots of book time, but travel as well?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Absolutely. So I have a photographer for the book, and we traveled throughout Greece, islands, mountains, across the mainland, and the goal was to capture the plant in the landscape where it grows. Some of the plants grown commonly in gardens, so we also have some garden photographs. But it's been such a highlight of the book project because we were able to meet locals who work with these medicinal plants. So in Crete, for example, we met with a man who harvests the resin from rock rose. And cystis is the common name. You know, he told us that the resin production has declined dramatically because of climate change, and there are not that many harvesters anymore. So that's an unfortunate story, but he's continuing to harvest, which has been a tradition since antiquity. So that's amazing. And we've also traveled to mountains. So, for example, we went to a mountain that had hellebore growing on top. And some of the locals remember from childhood that their fathers and grandfathers would harvest the plant and use it to help manage diseased trees because the plant is extremely poisonous. So they don't practice that anymore because there now there are other methods for that. But they just had this memory from childhood that really stayed with them when they saw a cutting of hellebore, like it brought them back to their childhood, which, you know, if childhood memories stick with you even in old age. So it's significant. The people we've met and the places we've been have shown us that these plants are still part of the lifestyles of local people and the landscape. So that was definitely a highlight of the book project.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Great. Yeah, it's nice to have a glimpse of some of those highlights moments. I know you've been traveling around with your list of plants, ticking them off gradually, doing lots of plant hunting trips. Were there any that were really hard to find?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

There were a couple that we actually missed the flowering period. So my publisher was gracious enough to give us an extension on two of the photographs that we'll take in the spring. So one of those plants we'll hopefully find on Imitos, uh mountain in Athens, and another one from a garden center that has it. So fingers crossed, that all goes as planned.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

What's the plant from Imitos?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

It's violet. Ah it's a wild type of violet, and violets were used in antiquity in wreaths and adornments and floral arrangements. So it's a significant celebratory plant in different rituals. So I wanted to include that in the book.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Fantastic. Uh I know you mentioned you mentioned briefly the kind of continuities between ancient and modern knowledge on these plants. It'd be interesting to hear just a little bit more about that. What ancient sources are you working with in particular here?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So I'm working with primarily I'm relying on a first-century physician named Pedanius Dioscarides. He wrote a textbook called De Materia Medica. The original Greek title was Peri Ulis iatrikis, and both the Latin and the Greek names translate to about medical material. His book is a five-volume textbook that was referenced up until the Middle Ages, so for over 1800 years, which is quite significant. It was translated into many languages, Latin, Arabic, most of the European languages, and then English was actually the last language it was translated to. So he's been my primary source. And I consider him my ancient mentor because he has taught me so much about medicinal plant use in antiquity. And comparing ancient uses with modern uses has been enlightening for me because then I've been able to understand these plants on a whole different level.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's a big text, isn't it? There's a lot. It's giant. You know it better than I do, I think. But it's do you get the impression that that he traveled around Greece looking at these plants in situ? Like, I mean, are you doing is he doing the same thing that you've been doing, in fact?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Exactly, exactly. And not only Greece, he traveled throughout the entire Mediterranean region. And it tells us that people traded plants and remedies with each other across the Mediterranean. A lot of plants from other regions were imported into Greece and incorporated into medicine. And it seemed to be, according to his book, a thriving business or a thriving profession where people would rely on these herbalists, these herbalist physicians, to help them heal from all sorts of ailments that they suffered from.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Great. Let's dive in now to zoom in a bit on a couple of examples, the plants that you would like to talk us through. Maybe we could talk about modern uses and functions, but perhaps to some of that ancient connection, maybe particularly for the first one. What's the first plant you want to present to us, Maria, today?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

So I mentioned hellebore already, so I'm happy to talk a little bit more about it. As I mentioned, it is a poisonous plant, so it's not for modern use. We've discontinued its use in herbal medicine. And hellebore, there is one species and one subspecies present in the wild in Greece. There are 15 total species in the world. And hellebore grows in mountain clearings, woodlands, it blooms in early spring, it has light yellow-green flowers, it has a long flowering period, so it's actually very common in home gardens. And the interesting thing about hellebore was that it was associated with a specific seaside town in Greece, where it grew abundantly on the hillsides and mountains nearby. And this town was called Antikyra, which still exists today. It is a seaside town on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, and it became the center for the production and preparation of hellebore medicines to cure the insane. So there are a number of literary references that talk about sending someone to Antiquita because they were acting mad, or they had mental conditions where people would consider them to be cured by, you know, helibore can cure any type of madness or insanity or maniacs in a sense. So hellebore has purgative properties, which means that it helps you vomit up the contents of your stomach. So depending on the dosage, hellebore could help you eliminate whatever was causing the madness from your body. It was a number of years that this town had this reputation. So it must have had some validity to the medicine. It must have been therapeutic on some level for it to have been used for quite a number of years. But it's poisonous. So we wouldn't use it today. But extracts of various helibore species have been studied on a pharmaceutical setting. And there are uses and potential pharmaceutical uses for helibores. So the ancients weren't wrong. We have just adjusted for our modern uses today. That's a fun and positive story from helibore from being associated with a specific place to now possibly being a pharmaceutical agent for our health.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I'd love to know more about that, the industry of hellebore gathering in Antiquera in Antiquity. We just don't have that information, but it's amazing to imagine these. I'd love to know how many people were involved in it and what kind of trade networks were how how it was marketed and sold and transported. It's I think there's one ancient source of Theophrastus who says that he's suggested it lasts for 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yes, exactly. It's impressive, yeah. No medicinal plant would we say keep it, it's okay for 30 years. That's a that's a lot of things. I mean whether whether he's right or not. That's a lot of money. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

And yeah, I should say that the if if you want to hear more about hellebore in Sitchi, then you can have a look at Maria's post on our Mountains of Greece website, which I attacked on a hiking route at the end of that, which goes up to the Paliovuna peak of Helicone, uh, which is one of the places where hellebore was uh harvested in antiquity. Yeah, it is amazing to see you could go up there and you could still see these plants growing in the places where they were harvested in antiquity. And that's yes, that's the scene of the longer account in Maria's post of that encounter with the old men in the in the cafe talking about helibore and their childhood.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So I'm so excited. It was such a moment.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Okay. Uh number two. Mountain tea. Is that right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yes. So mountain tea, um, siveritis is the genus name. And mountain tea is probably the most common medicinal plant in Greece. It's very popular. You can find it in restaurants and cafes. People usually have a stash in their home. Mountain tea is also called tzituvonu in Greek, which just translates to tea of the mountain. And mountain tea also has a long history of use since antiquity. It was considered a wound healer. The technical term is vulnerary, which means wound healing. And it was said to have cured many wounds from iron weapons during uh battles in antiquity. And it was applied as a poultice, which is a topical application, and it could uh staunch bleeding and then help heal the wound uh quickly, so the soldier could return to battle uh fortified and healed. So there are several species cultivated and sold in Greece. Uh, the unfortunate thing is that mountain tea has been over-harvested and over-grazed by animals, so it is illegal to harvest mountain tea because all wild species are threatened. So the wild populations have declined significantly over the years. But when you go to a shop, you buy a cultivated herb, and there are a number of high-quality commercial growers. So that is definitely a positive. So this is definitely a plant that represents a lot of Greek botanical history and cultural heritage as well. So there are four species that are cultivated and sold throughout Greece. One species uh is endemic to Mount Parnassus, another is endemic to Mount Olympus, there's one endemic to the Peloponnese, particularly Mount Taiegatos, and then there's one endemic to Crete, where it is referred to as Amaloptira. So anywhere you go in Greece, you can find mountain tea. So it's such a delightful plant, really lovely to drink, and it's high in antioxidants, high in iron, and it's just considered a general tonic to improve your wellness or help you recover from being sick. So we can do that. The interesting thing about its ancient use, so Diascaridis, my main source for my book, he has one sentence about mountain tea in his book. And so this is such a celebrated plant in Greece that for him to only mention one sentence is so bizarre. I don't know. So his one sentence tells us that it closes wounds and reduces inflammation. So it was clearly only used for external applications. He mentions nothing about its taste. He must not have ever had it as a tea, but today this is pretty much all you know we use it for. Mountain tea does a lot of different things for the body. It also reduces inflammation in the digestive tract. It has been studied for its anti-anxiety properties. It's recommended for anemia, osteoporosis, kidney stones, high blood pressure. It's really a one-stop shop for a medicinal plant if you wanted to choose one out of the pharmacopia of Greece. Uh, mountain tea is your go-to. So quite the impressive herb.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

It's nice to know that it's there in those, even if it only gets one line, it's still there in those ancient medical texts. That's good to know. It's such I mean it's a plant with so many rich cultural associations, isn't it? It's I was very pleased to see some mountain tea growing on Mount Pananas in the Southern Peloponnese a few months ago. It's great to see it there. I presume that's the tiger toss variety all over the southern Peloponnese. And obviously, I mean this it's a plant that is important right through southern Europe or the Balkans anyway. I mean it's I noticed that in Bulgaria, I think it's associated with longevity, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Exactly. Yeah. So it also grows there. But in Greece, each mountain region has an endemic species, and then all the way up to the north into Bulgaria as well, where they have a different species. So it's quite popular in this region of the world.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Great. Okay, finally, before we finish, I wonder if we could come back to some of the issues you touched on very briefly earlier, just about challenges and opportunities for the future. Something we've been talking about to all of our guests really in these podcast series. Clearly, the mountain regions of Greece are facing all sorts of challenges. There are difficult times ahead. What are the things that concern you most, both for their impact on the botanical heritage of Greece and more broadly, and what can we do about that for the future?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

So one of the challenges that I think we're facing worldwide is just, you know, overdevelopment, lack of concern for the environment, and really losing touch with the landscape. You know, we're just abusing the landscape almost worldwide. And this mindset is really to the detriment of ourselves because there's only so much development you can have before you really just destroy the natural environment. So in Greece, we have development for tourism, we have the installation of wind turbines, we have lack of regulation for harvesting wild plants, or the wide range of challenges. And then there's nobody really who has an influence on the government here to help rein in some of that development and the sale of uh mountaintops to foreign investors to develop wind turbines. So it's quite unfortunate, uh, but it's not unique to Greece. This is also happening in other places in the world. So I wish there could be just a strong advocate with uh influence to help guide some of these policies in Greece. But maybe that will come, I don't know. But that's a challenge that I see from my point of view. Because we do lose a lot of plants with development and a lot of the natural landscape where plants grow. Um and animals too lose their habitats. So they go hand in hand, animals and plants. So I think what we can do is when people come to Greece, not just think of going to the beach and being on vacation, but also exploring the mountain landscapes and learning about each mountain as you've been working on with your uh your website, has such cultural and historical significance and really deep diving into this history, not just going for a hike and doing an outdoor activity for you know your own wellness, but really learning the history and the cultural significance of place. Plants and animals go hand in hand with that. And I think if we can develop a healthy mountain tourism sector, I think that would be to the benefit of Greece as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Exactly. And the plants have to be a part of that, don't they? That the botanical heritage is part of the mountain heritage of Greece. For many people, plants are easy to miss, particularly the less high profile ones as you might think about being megafauna in mountain context. But actually, it's these much smaller, more unobtrusive plants that are often the kind of barometers of whether an environment is thriving or not, actually.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Exactly. Yeah, that's an excellent point. And we've suffered from wildfires every year, every summer. There's always one devastating fire after another, and that definitely transforms the landscape for plants and animals and humans. So yeah, it's just uh knowing more about uh our landscape around us and appreciating it more and fighting for it, you know, really advocating for uh the future and for future experiences on the mountains.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yeah. So the regulatory framework is clearly very important for this. That's the ideal. But in the absence of any way of conjuring that up into existence, actually just doing the kind of work you're doing of raising awareness and helping to build a sustainable mountain tourism sector is is crucial.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Exactly, exactly. And you've been doing a great job with that as well, with your website and and our mountain conference, I thought was a really great success with how many people were interested. So I think there are some hopeful signs.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, certainly exciting to be having all of these conversations with so many people with from so many different perspectives. Great. Okay, we'll draw to a close there. Thanks to Maria. Uh thanks to Zophia Gertin for editing. We've got more episodes coming up, exploring mountain heritage in Greece from a whole range of different perspectives. If you enjoy this episode, please do share our podcast with others. Have a look at other episodes. You can follow us on social media or get in touch directly via the Mountains of Greece project website. You might also like to have a look at the separate website for the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures project that this series is a part of us, a part of. Sorry, I'll say that again. You might also like to have a look at the separate website for the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures project that this series is a part of. You can follow the links to both of those in the episode notes. Thank you for listening.