The landscape of the manna ashes in Sicily

The manna ashes are related to wild species of the genus Fraxinus, namely F. ornus (true manna ash) and F. angustifolia (narrow leaved ash). About two centuries ago, several varieties of such species, selected in ancient times, were widely cultivated for extracting the manna drug. This represented a remarkable economic resource for the region. Manna was extracted mainly for pharmacological industry, but today it has became a herbal product. Irrespective of the processes that reduced this cultivation to the lowest extent, the manna ash landscape is a remarkable peculiarity in the frame of the Mediterranean agrosystems. It is still kept alive as a relict cultivation within a very restricted area on the northern slope of the Madonie Mountains, in the countryside of Castelbuono and Pollina, at the eastern border of the Palermo province (Northern Central Sicily) (Raimondo et al. 1995). Taking into account that most of the ash crops are presently abandoned or under agricultural replacement, the need of conserving such unique landscape is pointed out here (Raimondo 1980).