As the current chair of the NARGS Tours Committee, it falls upon me to find interesting places for our members to observe alpine plants in the wild. There are no lack of areas to potentially visit in spring and early summer. The problem there is trying to decide which place would be best. When it comes to areas to visit in late summer or fall, the options become much more restricted. It means either the southern hemisphere such as Chile, Argentina, South Africa or New Zealand, or an area with fall-blooming bulbs which is primarily Greece and Turkey. NARGS visited mainland Greece in the fall of 2019. It was a very popular trip so I decided in 2024 that we could re-visit the Greek autumn-flowering bulbs on another tour. To change it up a bit, I selected the Greek island of Crete. So from Oct 24-31, 2024, fourteen NARGS members joined me to explore Crete’s many autumn-flowering plants, which, as it happened included more than just bulbs.
