Table 2 presents the wild-sourced edible greens reported by the informants as traditionally gathered and consumed. Along with the botanical taxa, families, and voucher codes, the folk names that we recorded in the study area are provided, as well as the plant parts used, their traditional culinary uses, and the associated quotation frequency (proportion of the overall informants citing the specific food use of a given taxon).

In total, 57 wild folk taxa corresponding to 69 wild botanical taxa were recorded and identifed as folk wild edible greens. Figure 3 shows that nearly half of the gathered taxa are bitter, i.e. largely members of Asteraceae and Brassicaceae, while the top-quoted greens in Olympos are predominantly bitter. No significant differences were found between the taxa quoted by male and female community members; however, female study participants seemed more prone to provide details on the foraged item and their culinary processes.

Venn diagram showing the comparison of the overall quoted wild greens of Olympos with those of Central Crete [1]. Genera highlighted in bold are bitter (including all those belonging Asteraceae and Brassicaceae), while underlined genera are aromatic; genera marked with an asterisk have specific folk names in Olympos, diverging from the Greek ones. The cross symbol refers to shared folk taxa names

This remarkable number of gathered wild food plants shows that the Dodecanese represent an extraordinary hotspot of traditional foraging. Most of the quoted wild vegetables are mainly consumed cooked (boiled or pan-fried, or in pies; less frequently in omelettes), while only a few are used in salads, eaten as snacks, or added as seasoning. As in Crete, the chórta plants in Olympos are also locally classified according to their cooking method: boiled, pan-fried, and added as seasoning [1]. This classification, however, does not seem to be as prominent in the minds of locals in Olympos as the one we recorded in Central Crete, i.e. locals did not tend to immediately and automatically associate every plant with its main cooking method (as occurs in Crete).

Figures 3 and 4 compare Olympos’s and the Central Cretan wild food ethnobotanical data. Nearly half of the quoted taxa (58%) were also previously recorded in nearby central Crete [1]. However, in Olympos, botanical genera referring to bitter top-quoted (i.e. quoted by more than 40% of the study participants) wild greens genera are more prominent than the top-quoted bitter genera of Crete [1] (Fig. 4). In contrast, aromatic genera in Central Crete are substantially more frequently mentioned than in Olympos. This could be linked to the fact that the Cretan tradition, apart from boiled chorta, prefers pan-fried and pie-cooking methods, in which the occurrence of aromatic greens is considered essential. These differences in the top-quoted wild greens in Olympos could signify an influence from external cultures, i.e. from mainland Balkans (where the Doric civilisation is believed to have originated), or a gendered difference in the preference of traditional preparations. In Olympos, the significantly lesser importance of aromatic wild greens, which are generally appreciated for their strong taste and pan-fried by male community members, could represent a legacy of the solid matriarchal society, where male community members were absent from the village and often worked at sea for long periods.

Venn diagram showing the comparison of the top-quoted used wild greens of Olympos with those of Central Crete [1]. Genera highlighted in bold are bitter, while underlined genera are aromatic; genera marked with an asterisk have specific folk names in Olympos, diverging from the Greek ones. The cross symbol refers to shared folk taxa names

Cardus, Carlina, Centaurea, Chameleon, Lathyrus, Lotus, Prunus, Salvia, Sarcopoterium, Smyrnium, Scolymus, Tetranoglobus are used as snacks in OLY, while snack consumption was not considered in the CRE study.

However, the most significant difference was related to folk plant names. Unlike the folk plant names in Crete and the rest of Greece, Olympos retains a few specific folk plant names that do not match the standard Greek ones (N = 24 unique phytonyms out of 75 overall recorded phytonyms—see Table 2 and Figs. 3 and 4). Nonetheless, the large majority of wild greens in Olympos are named in standard Greek, likely due to an early exchange between an ancient Doric culture and the dominant Hellenic one.

By comparing the reported local names in our study and the Dictionary of Karpathian Idioms [29], we found that most of the reported names exist in the Dictionary. However, there are some differences regarding the accent, i.e. vowel stressed while pronouncing the word. Examples of different forms of the same word: skordalliòs in our study area/skordallúi in Rhodes; lichnì in our study area/lichnìdia in the rest of Karpathos; Krítama-kritamonin our study area/akríthamos in Othos. Some plant names, such as Ópsa (Smyrnium olusatrum), are derived from an ancient Greek word that means light food, finger food, or something accompanying bread, e.g. cheese. There are 18 plant names from Table 2 that were not found in the Dictionary. Some of them are common Greek words, such as agriosélino, agriasfarágia, sefkla, agriaspánaka, angátha, molóha, agrioradíki. Some idiomatic names, however, were possibly unknown to the dictionary author, or they may have been imported later or used by Olympitan speakers who had been infuenced by other Karpathian idioms or even by other languages. Examples: stafchóri, kokkinolàhano, glifúni, ladarántzoa, agriokrisári, glykosirídi, kartamélia, oksialína, chinália, mirguátana, mavrovukià, alloidosírìa, and gobunúllio.

Of the 24 specific Olympos phytonyms, only two refer to genera (Amaranthus and Rumex) among the top-quoted ones in Olympos that were not top-quoted in Central Crete. Figures 3 and 4 show that a possible Doric legacy in phytonyms is prominent among the wild greens that were infrequently quoted in Olympos.

Additionally, the six botanical genera locally named in (presumably) Doric in Olympos are also used in Central Crete; these show, in our opinion, the remarkable linguistic resilience in Olympos.

Moreover, six other botanical genera were named in both standard Greek and Doric in the study sites and may demonstrate a long transition between the two languages. In any case, the dominance of the standard Greek language in Olympos' phytonyms unfortunately reveals the vanishing of its phytolinguistic uniqueness.

Our study therefore shows that phytolinguistic differences may indicate ancient trajectories of cultural encounters that may not be reflected in differences in plant food reports.

In other words, when a language starts to decline (in our case, the local Doric idiom of Olympos many centuries ago), vernacular “folk generics” (folk plant names given by one lexeme only) may remain as formal nutshells. Still, plant reports may have changed and adapted to the Hellenic mainstream culture, or, more simply, plant reports could already have been similar to the mainstream at the start of the cultural contact. This indicates that a presumed ancient Doric LEK may have existed during the “ancient Greece” period (from the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity, approximately 600 AD) when the Doric language was widely spoken in the Dodecanese (including Crete), the Southern Cyclades, Southern Peloponnese (Sparta/Laconia, Messenia, and Argolis regions), and a few small portions of Asia Minor and Magna Graecia in Southern Italy. After this classical period, Doric was mainly replaced by the Attic dialect upon which the Koine or "common Greek language” of the Hellenistic period was based, and the Doric culture started to disappear.

LEK on wild greens in Olympos are, therefore, still partially distinct from the mainstream Hellenic/Greek one in terms of nomenclature and also in the predominance of bitter, and absence of aromatic genera among the top-quoted wild greens. However, some open questions remain: we do not know how exactly the exchange of Olympos’ wild plant knowledge with the mainstream dominant Hellenic/Greek culture has occurred during this long period (approximately fifteen centuries, spanning from the fully Doric Olympos to the apparent last phase of its linguistic/cultural adaptation that is taking place today).

We do not know if and how hybrid plant knowledge circulated for centuries (both within Karpathos and with neighbouring islands) because we lack precise historical data on plant use in the study region.

Moreover, if we consider the top-quoted botanical genera used as wild greens in Olympos and those from previous ethnobotanical studies conducted in the Mediterranean [3], Olympos’ wild vegetable ethnobotany is similar to that of neighbouring Crete [1] and, to a lesser extent, that of Lebanon and Syria [6, 7, 30], Sicily [31], and Ikaria [3] (Fig. 5). The distance between the sites in the DCA plot reflects similarities and dissimilarities in wild plant uses, which are, in turn, influenced by ecological and cultural variables. However, the environmental variable that may have influenced the patterns of DCA representation (i.e. plants widely available in one area and less so in others) was mitigated by the fact that we considered only botanical genera and not individual species and also by the fact that these genera refer to synanthropic plants in the Mediterranean that are available nearly everywhere. Moreover, specific non-relevant dissimilarities were reduced or mitigated by considering only comparative field studies and, therefore, data that indicated the most quoted species (i.e. that reported quotation indexes) and not all of the quoted taxa.

DCA analysis shows the top-quoted (named by at least 40% of interviewees) wild vegetable genera of Olympos (OLY) compared with those of other Mediterranean areas. ARM: Armenia [32]; ASS: Assyrian [33]; CRE: Crete [1]; IKA: Ikaria [3], KUR: Kurdistan region of Iraq [34]; LEB: Lebanon [7]; PAL: Palestine [8]; SIC: Sicily [31]; SYR: Syria [30]; TUN: Tunisia [35]. Eigenvalue: Axis 1 = 0.64, Axis 2 = 0.44

Therefore, Olympos's position in the DCA analysis shows that it belongs to the ethnobotany “system” of Greece, the Levant, and Sicily.

The findings of this study could be of some interest to the local economy of Olympos as well. It is essential to highlight that Karpathos, like many other Greek and Mediterranean islands, is characterised by a fragile ecosystem, severely affected by increasing drought, limited water resources, and a disturbed balance between nature and human activities [36]. However, in this ecosystem, vulnerability is further exacerbated by the imbalanced distribution of mass tourism, which is the primary source of income for Olympos and, even more so, for the rest of the isle. Our study area is nearly deserted in the winter months and heavily overloaded with people and activities at the peak of the tourist season, as all the yearly income needs to be generated within a few months of tourism activities. This creates highly unsustainable economic and environmental conditions, such as significant human migration during the winter, the abandonment of agricultural activities, and the expansion of tourist settlements. In addition, this unsustainable tourism is highly dependent on energy-intensive resources (e.g. transportation to the isle, food for feeding tourists arriving from the mainland, etc.), which may contribute to further global climate change [37]. Thus, the call for ecotourism appears crucial on Karpathos and other similar islands [15]. Wild food plants and their related local dishes could play a vital role in small-scale community-based initiatives, as they may attract attention to wild plant habitats and promote awareness of bio-conservation.

It has been argued that over collection of wild-growing plants from the natural environment can severely impact their populations [38,39,40], mainly when these wild individuals or populations belong to range-restricted, locally endemic species when they are at risk of extinction and/or involved in international electronic trade [18]. Given that not all plant species are tolerant to the same degree of overharvesting and different plant parts are usually appreciated in diverse species (e.g. bulbs/roots, leaves, or flowers/inflorescences), attention should be paid to even widespread species with edible roots or bulbs (e.g. Allium, Cichorium, and Muscari spp.) or harvestable flowers/inflorescences (e.g. Origanum sp.) when they are directly sourced from the natural environment. It has been reported that the wild populations of such overharvested species can rapidly decline demographically in specific areas due to the hindering of their sexual (flowers) or asexual (bulbs) reproductive potential [18, 38, 40]. Such trends are significant for the herein wild edible greens Centaurea raphanina subap. raphanina and Origanum onites (Greek endemic and subendemic, respectively), which are highly appreciated for their inflorescences and are therefore directly harvested from wild populations not only in Karpathos (Table 2) but also throughout the Aegean Archipelago [40]. A previous study in Crete examining wild-growing populations of traditional wild edible greens with large distribution ranges (e.g. across the Mediterranean) has shown that high levels of local population heterogeneity are recorded in high-altitude regions associated with limited residential and agricultural development; on the other hand, in the coastal areas that people primarily inhabit, lower heterogeneity levels are detected in their wild populations, probably due to degradation of their wild habitats [39].

As discussed above, initiatives aimed at seriously promoting ecotourism in Karpathos should be fostered; the initiative "Ecotourism Karpathos” has, for example, highlighted that mass tourism has resulted in a significant loss of local traditions [41].