Costas Zissis, Photographer; Pierre Authier, Botanist

Last night to Aristi (Zagori) to see Costas Zissis' fascinating photographic exhibition Wild Flowers of Mt. Tymphe at the impressive Aristi Mountain Resort (and YouTube Resort presentation)

See Costas' time-lapse video, Mt. Tymphe (Zagori Villages, Vikos-Aoos National Park)

Costas' website

Afterwards to the Zissis Hotel in Aristi. A great evening! Thank you, Costa. Hotel information

Costas's exhibition opened at the Ioannina Archaeological Museum. It will be shown in Truro Cathedral in Cornwall.

Visited Costas' exhibition in the company of two very hardy and distinguished French botanists, Pierre Authier and his colleague Daniel Gasnier, who've been studying the flora of the Vikos Gorge and Zagori and Timfi mountains since 1979 (truly hardy annuals). Some information about Pierre from the web:

Authier, Pierre (62 rue de Paris, F-93800 Epinay/Seine, France) is currently preparing an orchid flora of Mt. Timfi in Epirus, northwest Greece http://www.kew.org/herbarium/orchid/ORN32/corres.htm

Pierre Authier – Catalogue commenté des plantes vasculaires de la région des monts Timfi (Epire, nord-ouest Grèce) (Parc National du Vikos-Aoos et environs). I. – Privately published (P. Authier, rue de Paris 62, F-93800 Epinay), 1995. [7] + xvii + 143 pages, drawings, colour photographs, paper.

The Timfi mountain group is a limestone massif situated in the Epirus (Ipiros) province of N.W. Greece, skirting 2500 metres of altitude and split by deep gorges and ravines. It has been visited repeatedly by botanists during the last 100 years, and several plant species have been described from there, although virtually none is strictly limited to the area. Mount Timfi’s flora has conquered the heart and mind of Pierre Authier, who has for many years been devoting all his time and energy to its study. The present, privately published account deals with perhaps one tenth of its vascular plants, being limited to the families treated in the first half of volume 1 of Flora europaea. Authier reveals himself as a very thorough and critical observer, but also as a cautious judge of his findings, reluctant to draw hasty conclusions. What he calls a "commented catalogue" comes very close to a full local flora, except for the fact that keys and descriptive matter are not provided methodically under each item but, when present, form part of often extensive and most informative corollary discussions and notes. The fair and thorough way in which past questionable (obviously mostly erroneous) records are dealt with is a model of its kind. The work is embellished by 11 colour plates with 27 of the author’s photographs illustrating about one tenth of the 203 native or naturalized accepted species.
http://www.optima-bot.org/publications/Newsletter/30/

Authier, Pierre, 1993: Contributions to Flora Hellenica: Flora of the Mounts Timfi area Epirus, N.W. Greece I. Acta Botanica Gallica 140(5): 525-533 http://eurekamag.com/research/009/803/contributions-flora-hellenica-flora-mounts-timfi-region-epirus-nw-greece.php