Tainted landscapes

The maquis overlooking the Golfo Dei Poeti outside La Spezia, Italy

For me, the quintessence of the Mediterranean landscape is the evergreen shrubland covering most of the lands around the sea, as well as those of its islands. This biome is known in French as 'maquis' and in Italian as 'macchia', hence the term maquis shrubland in English. In French, the…