THE UTILIZATION OF WOODY PLANTS IN AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS

Two types of combinations, “Ypoklimadentra” (trees under vine) or “anadendradesampeli” (vines on trees), were often used by farmers; in many places, they used to leave grapevines to climb and twist on trees planted for this purpose, creating garlands among them. Earlier on, in documents from Mount Athos, there were detailed definitions of areas, borders, the extent of the estates and the trees they hosted. An example is: “vineyard, of ¼ modio in which trees ypoklima, walnuta΄” (modio=1 stremma) (Kephalopoulou 2014). In Geoponika (Agronomy), it is reported for the 10th century (Vassos 2008) about anadendradesampeli: ”Anadendrades are of great usefulness to everybody. Because, they produce the best quality wine, which is the sweetest and longest preserved and if they are planted sparse, they allow cultivation every two years on the land between them… Not all trees should be anadendrades, but only those … whose foliage is not too dense, so that not all the vines are shadowed. And these trees are elms, upright poplars, ashes and sycamores. And they should have a height of thirty feet (10 meters)… Their conformation manner varies from place to place. The system is adaptable on fertile soils and it has the advantage that it facilitates digging and plowing of the field and allows vegetable cultivation in it”. This is a description of a well-organized agroforestry system. In this way, Christians avoided multiple taxation. In the Rodopi area, ypoklimadentra was a usual form of intercropping (Kampa et al. 2008).

Given that in the past, Greek agroforestry systems were very rarely inventoried, a useful index for the recognition of the origin of these traditional agrosilvopastoral systems is the characteristic form of pollarding trees, i.e. trees from which leaf and twig fodder were cut. Traditional tree management is linked with fodder harvesting, which was and still is a basic source of food for livestock in some areas for the winter period. Sometimes leaf fodder production was and is the main object of management in private and/or state forests. Fodder harvesting has significantly affected the landscape ecology of mountainous Greece. Leaf and twig fodder harvesting played a major role in shaping the cultural landscapes and in particular the structure and composition of vegetation, as well as the tree forms (Halstead 1998). Local names such as Kouri, kladaries or kladero (twig fodder) exist all over Greece (SioliouKaloudopoulou and Ispikoudis 2005, see also the paper of V. Dalkavoukis in the present volume).

The result of all this was the creation of distinctive cultural landscapes, where characteristic agrosilvopastoral systems dominate. In recent years, these systems are threatened by gradual abandonment (extentification) or by their transformation to agricultural monocultures (intensification). Since parts of these systems (trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants or agricultural cultivations) are in dynamic balance, any discontinuation of activities that maintain those systems makes them fragile, resulting in the decrease of products and services they provide (Mantzanas et al. 2004). The cessation of fodder harvesting, as a result of the abandonment of extensive stockbreeding and some rigidness of forest management legislation, has resulted in significant loss of our heritage, since pollarded or shredded trees are dying and disappearing from our landscapes, while new such landscapes are not created. Due to their high historical, aesthetic, recreational and ecological value, it is essential to reintroduce traditional pruning techniques to rejuvenate existing ancient, centuries-old trees, as a new start for their long-term management.