Adriatic & Balkan plant medicine

The Adriatic hinterland and the Balkan mountains hold one of Europe's richest living foraging traditions. On the karst above the sea, Helichrysum italicum — immortelle — burns gold in the heat; in the spring beech woods, Allium ursinum (wild garlic) carpets the ground; by the rivers, elder and rosehip and meadowsweet mark the turning year. This is Balkan and Adriatic plant medicine: not a spa idea of wellness but a worked knowledge of what grows where, and when to gather it.

Living Algorithm meets these plants on The Crossing — a seasonal journey through Bosnia and Herzegovina, entered by a sea-gate landfall in Dubrovnik. Each chapter is anchored to a place, a season, and a signature plant, and each of those plants keeps a record in the apothecary. The wild-foraging calendar runs from the immortelle of April around Mostar and Blagaj to the gentian and juniper of a September in Sutjeska's old-growth forest.

This is the second of two shores. Its root is the same as the Haitian plant medicine the house was built on — two traditions of leaf and season, read across the water from each other. Several plants below are kept in both pharmacopeias.