From sunrise in the village of Agros, 1,100m above sea level in the Troodos mountain range, Andria Tsolakis, her younger sister Elena, and their mother Maria busy themselves among their rose bushes.
In the crisp morning air, they gather the Damask roses for which Agros and the family are famed.
For more than seven decades, the Tsolakis family have cultivated the pink rose of Syrian origin that they say first cropped up mysteriously at the foot of the village church.
From the precious harvest, they extract rosewater and oils used in cooking and cosmetics.
“We need around 400 flowers to make 1kg of rose petals. And from that kilo, we will produce two litres of rosewater,” said 31-year-old Andria.
When their father took over the business, he decided to start a boutique called “The Rose Factory” and to add Agros to the eastern Mediterranean island’s tourist circuit.
In a normal tourist season, before the pandemic, “we welcomed up to 10 buses every day”, said Elena.
‘Best in the Roman empire’
Today, a partly European Union-funded project aims to promote tourism in six southern European states – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Italy and Malta – with the lure of their aromatic and medicinal plants.
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Pathways Across Europe, or Mappae, says its mission is to “create a multisensory, tourist and cultural thematic route, linking European destinations united by a common tradition”.
“We are blessed with more than 800 different herbs, some of which can only be found in Cyprus,” said Yioula Michaelidou Papakyriacou, Cypriot coordinator of the project.
“Our grandmothers could heal everything with herbs,” she said.
Papakyriacou puts the high quality of the island’s essential oils down to its geology, the formation of the Troodos range, air quality and weather conditions.
“The climate here is ideal to grow these kinds of herbs, because herbs love the heat and strong sun,” said Miranda Tringis, a herbalist who runs a botanical park near Ayia Napa, the island’s top beach destination.
“It was like that in the first century AD, when the naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote that the herbs of Cyprus are the best in the entire Roman empire,” she said.
“That is still true to this day.”