Lentisco

Just as blackberries are the ‘mother of forests’, so the lentisk is mother of the limestone wilderness. The whole shrub has an acrid pungency, often carried on the wind.

The Romans used the small red berries, which grow in clusters and turn black, ground in the mortar with other aromatics in cooking, as they also used the bitter seeds of rue and those of myrtle. The Sards in prehistoric times extracted their oil by grinding the seeds in hollows in the rocks, as did the island inhabitants of Pantelleria. (Carlo Maxia: lecture, 1973 on ‘Piety and Sacrificial Altars’ at Cagliari.)