CENTURY-OLD TREES AND AGROFORESTRY LANDSCAPES

Agroforestry landscapes used to be multifunctional systems, simultaneously serving different uses and functions. Their centuries-old trees were associated with specific functions: trees of rest and respite during the pre-industrial agricultural period, shade trees used by shepherds for their flocks during summers’ hottest hours (Figure 2) or places of celebration hosting rural festivities and ceremonies in outlying church yards. Some of them, as socialized cultural elements of the environment, were preserved due to beliefs that associated them with appearances of the supernatural. In such cases, gigantic or ”demonic” trees were often purified by their dedication to the Church via the construction of icons or churches next to them. With this praxis people tamed wild nature and ensured the common use of important natural resources for all community members, often providing a solution to long-standing ownership problems that used to plague neighboring communities for years (Nitsiakos et al. 1998).

At least in Epirus, NW Greece, the primary activity that maintained agroforestry landscapes open was extensive grazing. Grazing formed landscapes suitable for the production of other staple goods used or consumed by families: leaf fodder, forest fruits and nuts, aromatic and medicinal plants, mushrooms, honey, game and others, today known as “Non Timber Forest Products”. The term “Non wood” or “Secondary forest harvests”, as they are named by the Greek Administration, indicates the great importance that has been given to timber and wood. Such policies, which began to be implemented in Europe from the 18th century, attributed multifunctional forest or agroforestry landscapes exclusively to industrial forestry (Serinidou 2014) and only recently is there a tendency to redirect this trend (Martínez de Arano et al. 2021).

“SACRED FORESTS” AND “MEADOWS”

Agroforestry landscapes used to be management systems of important common resources. In Epirus (NW Greece), sacred forests maintained by communities functioned as such management systems in order to protect settlements from natural disasters or to secure/safeguard important natural resources, such as precious potable water. They were also kept as reserve forests for times of crisis. At such times, a fair and controlled use of sacred forests ensured grazing, shredding and logging for firewood or even timber for important community projects, such as the construction of schools or churches (Stara et al. 2016). Although the above uses were considered unacceptable in sacred forests, social pressures often imposed a shift from absolute protection to controlled management on these socio-ecological systems. In such cases, on the “untouched” forest and only on a case-by-case basis, it was possible to collect dead wood, remove bushes from the understory, often through “ritual rule-breaking” and to implement controlled grazing, all resulting in the making of open forest landscapes. For example, the feast day of St Nikolaos on May 20th (the day of transfer of his relics) marked the opening of the grazing period in the sacred forest of St Nikolaos in Livadakia of Vitsa (Zagori), kept intact until then, in order to host the community festival (Figure 3). Similarly, in other villages located in higher altitudes, this date was postponed, following other celebrations, such as the feast of Prophet Elias on July 20th. This controlled management kept the understory free of woody vegetation, maintaining a typical open forest type and protecting it from the risk of a catastrophic fire. The beginning of the permission to roam given on the day of the saints’ feasts guaranteed acceptance by all community members.

Interestingly, many sacred forests are called locally “livadia” (literally meadows) and at least 11 have been detected only in Zagori. The etymology of the word livadi is related to the ancient Greek word ‘livas’, meaning water drop or stream, as these forests were related to water management (Stara and Tsiakiris 2010) (Figure 4). Although today many livadia have the form of dense forests, a careful examination of their oldest trees, the age of which reaches 300-350 years, shows that they initially grew up in an open environment, which over the years was flooded with younger and often different species of trees.