Acres of bright red poppies are the most obvious visual sign that spring is gaining the upper hand around the Central Aegean region of Turkey. The cool, wet winter is almost over, and by the end of May many places will have seen their last rain until September.

Spring is therefore the best time of year to see the widest variety of plants and flowers in their prime. Turkey has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to what grows and can be grown, wild and cultivated, over a vast area with a great diversity of terrains, habitats and climates: from sub-tropical on the Black Sea coast to semi-desert at its eastern borders; mountains, valleys, plains, marshes, fields, meadows and forests.

On most of the plants and flowers on this page there is some kind of insect crawling, feeding, hunting or just lounging around and soaking up the sun. Some of them are so tiny it's difficult to spot them with the naked eye, especially the Lilliputian ants.

The rich plant life attracts an enormous variety of creeping, crawling, wriggling, hopping and flying creatures, which in turn attract several species of birds, tortoises, lizards and amphibians (see Ionian spring part 3), as well as snakes, rodents and other small mammals. Everybody here is working on the food-chain-gang.

The genus Alcea rosea, of which there are 60 species, belong to the same family of Malvaceae (mallows) as the common mallow above.

At this point in the blog I have to admit that I am no expert on flowers, so I won't embarrass myself any further by trying to name all the beautiful blooms in the photos below.

I really should have paid more attention on those school field trips, back in the days when the term "field trip" meant literally walking around a field, trying not to trample on the plants or small creaures underfoot or step in the discs of cow dung, or field pancakes as we called them.

I am making belated progress in plant identification though, with the help of a few books and internet sites, but I still have trouble distinguishing between similar plants, sub-species and the like. One website I particularly like is yabanicicek.com, which has an illustrated A-Z of Turkish wildflowers.

Here are a few snaps of thistles especially for our Scottish readers. The giant thistles of Miletus are majestic, and if you don't bother them they won't bother you.

The port city of Miletus (Greek, Μίλητος, Miletos; Latin, Miletus) was once a powerful and wealthy city until its harbour was finally silted up by the Maeander River (Greek, Μαίανδρος; today known as Büyük Menderes, Big Maeander), in the same way that the Cayster river (or Kaystros; Greek, Κάυστρος; now called Küçük Menderes, Small Maeander) left Ephesus landlocked.

The soil in the fields around Selçuk and Ephesus is fine, deep silt, deposited here over thousands of years by the Cayster River (see above). Just the job, apparently, for peaches.

These mulberry trees provide much-needed shade for pedestrians and cyclists along the side of road between Selçuk and Ephesus (distance 3 kilometres). In May the sweet, soft, berry-like fruits fall from the trees, making things a bit squelchy underfoot. Fortunately, unlike the red or black mulberries of the Morus nigra, these white mulberries (Morus alba) will not stain your clothing or footwear. They are edible and nutritious, but are not to everyone's taste.

Mulberries were known in the west at least as far back as Roman times, and play a part in the tragic myth of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's Metamorphoses, retold in more recent times in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer night's dream. The tree became commercially and culturally important in Anatolia and southeastern Europe during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods after the jealously-guarded secret of silk was brought along the Silk Road from China around 550 AD, according to legend stolen by two Christian monks, thus destroying the 3000 year Chinese monopoly.

The mulberry trees were cultivated in many places around the Ottoman Empire to feed the silkworms which spin the precious thread to form cocoons each spring. The silkworm is actually not a worm, but the larva (caterpillar) and pupa (cocooned) forms of the immature silk moth Bombyx mori (Latin, silkworm of the mulberry tree) which feeds almost exclusively on mulberry leaves.

Silk production, or sericulture, became an important factor in the Turkish economy, reaching a zenith in 1908 when a record 18,338 tons of cocoons were produced. The centre of Ottoman silk cloth manufacture was at Bursa, which during the industry's heyday had over 5,000 silk-weaving looms. However, with the import of cheaper silk from China and other east Asian countries, the industry in Turkey declined rapidly and many farmers abandoned it. The mulberry has remained, and its fruit is used to make wine, jam, sherbet and desserts.

In recent years there has been a renewed demand for domestically produced silk in Turkey, mostly to manufacture the carpets bought by tourists. 139,599 kg of cocoons were produced in the spring of 2009, providing seasonal employment for 2358 farmers in 211 villages. Many tours of the Selçuk and Ephesus area include a visit to a local carpet factory with a silk production area.

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