A Preveli beach tour is a trip to Preveli, a place on the south coast of Crete. This page explains the ideas around it in plain words. It starts with the place and the word lagoon. Then it turns to three kinds of palm, the estuary and the drainage basin. Four more sections cover the common reed, the tamarisk, the oleander and the chaste tree. Two sections explain church words, stavropegic and abbot. A last section gives four short answers. Each fact comes from Wikipedia and describes its subject in general. Nothing here says what any trip includes or shows. Every hard word gets a one-line meaning, and the sentences stay short. More ideas for days out in Greece are grouped under the Greece tours list on the home page.
What is a Preveli beach tour?
The Preveli beach tour is a trip named after Preveli, a place on the southern shore of Crete. It lies within the Rethymno region. Locals sometimes call the Preveli beach by another name, and that name is Palm Beach.
A lagoon is shallow water. A narrow landform, or strip of land, cuts it off from a larger body of water. The word lagoon comes from łaguna, a Venetian word for the waters around Venice. The name Preveli beach tour has three words: a place, a shore and a trip.
The Preveli beach tour shares part of its name with the Preveli beach. Below the monastery lie the Preveli lagoon and beach, at the gorge’s mouth. Monks live together in a monastery, and water cuts a gorge, a valley with tall rock sides. The mouth is where the gorge opens out.
Coastal lagoons form along gently sloping coasts, where barrier islands or reefs can develop out at sea. Long, narrow islands off a coast are called barrier islands. Reefs are ridges of rock or coral near the sea’s surface. Coastal lagoons do not form along steep or rocky coasts.
Coastal lagoons are young and dynamic. Young means recently formed, and dynamic means full of change. They occur along nearly 15 percent of the shorelines on Earth. A shoreline is where land meets water. These facts describe lagoons in general and are not specific to the Preveli beach tour.
- Palm trees: A wide glade of palm trees, tall trees with long leaves, stands behind the beach.
- Heart rock: A rock in the shape of a heart on the beach is called the stone of lovers.
- Odd names: Lake Illawarra, Montrose Basin and Broad Water are classified as lagoons despite their names.
The monastery’s official name is the Holy Stavropegiac and Patriarchal Preveli Monastery of St. John the Theologian. Stavropegiac and patriarchal both link to a patriarch, a senior church leader. The Preveli beach tour name shares only Preveli with it.
What does the Cretan date palm bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour gains a plant story from the Cretan date palm. A palm is a tall plant with a bare, upright stem and a crown of large leaves. This one grows up to 15 m (49 ft) tall.
Plant notes for a Preveli beach tour can start with the leaves. The palm’s leaves are pinnate. That means leaflets sit on both sides of a central stalk. Each leaf is 2–3 m (6.6–9.8 ft) long. The rigid, greyish-green leaflets are 15–50 cm (6–20 in) long.
The fruit is an oval, yellowish-brown drupe. A drupe is a fruit with one hard seed inside. It is 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long. The pulp, the soft flesh around the seed, is too thin and fibrous to be of farming value. Fibrous means made of tough threads.
Place facts add detail to a Preveli beach tour as well. Ayios Nikitas, in Heraklion Prefecture, is one of the Crete sites for the palm. A prefecture is a named regional area. Trees are also found on Amorgos island and on Halki Island. Both places are islands.
Plant history sits beside a Preveli beach tour topic too. It has been proposed that the palm grew over a much wider area in Ancient Greece. A range is the area where a plant grows. The proposed range reached from Crete to Thebes and from the Peloponnese to Delos.
- Stands: Southwest Turkey has four stands, which are separate groups of palm trees.
- Science: Scientists did not describe the palm’s presence in Turkey until the 1980s.
- Mainland: Around 10 trees in the Epidaurus area are the only natural stand on the mainland.
A last plant detail concerns old growth. Dead leaves stay attached to the stem for years after withering, which means drying up and dying. That is one more plant fact to set beside a Preveli beach tour topic.
What does the European fan palm bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour brings a plant lesson about the European fan palm, or Mediterranean dwarf palm. Palms are plants with woody stems topped by a crown of large leaves. Its genus, a group of close relatives, is Chamaerops.
Chamaerops humilis, the species in a Preveli beach tour lesson, is a shrub-like clumping palm. A shrub is a small woody plant. A clump is stems rising from one base. Stems eventually reach 2–5 m (10–20 ft) tall. Trunk diameter is 20–25 cm (8–10 in).
Each leaf grows up to 1.5 m (5 ft) long. The leaflets, the narrow blades of the leaf, are 50–80 cm (20–30 in) long. Each leaf stalk ends in a rounded fan of 10–20 leaflets. These sizes help a Preveli beach tour reader picture the plant.
Flowers form in dense, short clusters at the tops of the stems. Dense means packed close together. Unripe fruits are bright green. They ripen to dull yellow or brown in autumn, the season between summer and winter. These colour facts describe the plant itself, apart from any Preveli beach tour.
The plant is mainly found in southwestern Europe, along the south coasts of Spain and Portugal. Southwestern Europe is the southern and western part of the continent. Spain and Portugal are countries in that region. A coast is where land borders the sea. The plant also prefers hot summers.
- Cold limit: Hardy means able to survive cold, and this palm is hardy to −12 °C (10 °F).
- Craft use: Leaves of adult plants have been used to make brooms and to weave mats and baskets.
- Fruit: Fruit is not used as human food because of bitterness and tannin, a bitter plant substance.
Only one insect species, a weevil named Derelomus chamaeropsis, is known to pollinate the palm. A weevil is a small beetle. To pollinate is to carry pollen between flowers. That ends the plant profile for a Preveli beach tour post.
What does the date palm bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour draws extra plant background from the date palm, Phoenix dactylifera. That Latin name belongs to a flowering plant in the palm family called Arecaceae. It grows up to 30 metres, or 98 feet, tall.
Palms are tall plants whose trunks end in a crown of long leaves. Date palm leaves carry spines on the leaf stalk, which joins leaf to trunk. Each leaf has about 150 leaflets, or small leaf blades. Such plant details add background to a Preveli beach tour.
Date fruits are oval-cylindrical, meaning long and rounded, and measure 3 to 7 centimetres. A seedling is a young plant that grows from a seed. Only 50% of date seedlings are female and bear fruit. Fruit facts like these give a Preveli beach tour story one more plant detail.
Cuttings are pieces cut from a plant and set to root. Plants grown from cuttings fruit 2 to 3 years earlier than seedlings. To pollinate is to carry pollen, the fine dust that helps a plant make fruit. With help, one male date palm can pollinate up to 100 females.
When Muslims break the Ramadan fast in the evening, they traditionally eat a date first. Ramadan is a Muslim month of fasting, or going without food. Dates are mentioned more than 50 times in the Bible and 20 times in the Quran. The Bible and the Quran are holy books.
- Mehrgarh, Pakistan: Dig evidence of date farming here dates to around 7000 BCE, counted back from year one.
- Ancient Egypt: Egyptians used the fruit to make date wine and ate dates at harvest.
- Seeds: Soaked and ground up, date seeds can serve as animal feed.
The date palm is widely cultivated, which means grown as a crop. This happens in northern Africa, the Middle East and the coastal Mediterranean basin. The basin is the region around that sea. These facts give a Preveli beach tour story its plant background.
What does an estuary bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour raises the question of what an estuary is. An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish, or slightly salty, water. Freshwater from rivers or streams meets and mixes with saltwater from the open sea.
Sea water enters an estuary with the rhythm of the tides. Tides are the regular rising and falling of the sea. Drowned river valleys are also known as coastal plain estuaries. A drowned valley is a river valley flooded by the sea. These terms frame talk of a Preveli beach tour.
Bar-built estuaries are shallow and separated from the sea by sand spits or barrier islands. A sand spit is a thin strip of sand reaching into the water. Pleistocene glaciers, ice masses of long ago, deepened and widened river valleys, leaving them U-shaped in cross-section. Cut across, such a valley looks like a U.
Salinity is the amount of salt in water. It ranges from near zero where tides stop in feeder rivers to 3.4% at the estuary mouth. A salt wedge estuary has freshwater floating on seawater in a layer that thins toward the sea. Facts like these set the scene for a Preveli beach tour.
Estuaries function as nursery habitats for the early life stages of marine fish and shellfish. A nursery habitat is a place where young animals start their lives. Shellfish are water animals with shells. This nursery role belongs to the meaning of estuary in any Preveli beach tour text.
- Cordgrass: Cordgrass vegetation dominates the salt marsh landscape, meaning the grass is the main plant there.
- San Francisco Bay: Crustal movements, meaning shifts in Earth’s rock, of the San Andreas Fault system formed San Francisco Bay.
- Drowned valleys: The Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay are United States examples of drowned river valley estuaries.
Sediment is loose soil and sand carried by water. It can clog the feeding and breathing parts of estuary species. With these plain words in place, a Preveli beach tour description reads clearly when estuaries come up.
What does a drainage basin bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour page can borrow the plain term drainage basin from geography. A drainage basin is land where surface water flows together toward one point. Surface water is water that lies or runs on top of the ground.
Neighbouring basins are separated by the drainage divide. The divide is a perimeter, or outer edge, of raised ridges and hills. The high ground around each basin shows where one ends and the next begins. The same map idea fits any Preveli beach tour page that speaks of rivers.
In a closed basin, water converges on an interior sink instead of flowing to the ocean. To converge is to come together at one place. A sink here is the spot where the water collects. Endorheic basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. They cover around 18% of the Earth’s land.
The Amazon has the largest river basin by area, at 7 million square kilometres. Square kilometres measure the size of flat land. Just over 13% of the world’s land drains to the Pacific Ocean. Drains to means the water runs off the land and ends up there.
Water flowing over ground and along rivers can pick up nutrients, sediment and pollutants. Nutrients feed living things, sediment is loose soil and grit, and pollutants are unwanted substances. Finding a drainage boundary is called watershed delineation. These terms matter wherever a Preveli beach tour page speaks of rivers.
- Other names: Catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area and river basin are other names for a drainage basin.
- Rain gauges: The Thiessen polygon method divides a basin into flat shapes, each centred on a rain gauge.
- Brazilian law: Brazilian water law makes the drainage basin the area unit for managing water.
Managing shared drainage basins is also seen as a way to build peaceful relationships among countries. So the term reaches past maps and rivers. A Preveli beach tour page that uses it borrows a word with a wide reach.
What does the common reed bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour gains background from the common reed, a flowering plant in the grass family Poaceae. A reed is a tall kind of grass with long, upright stems. It can grow to a height of between 2 and 6 metres.
The common reed is a helophyte, a plant that grows in shallow water in ponds, lakes and rivers. It also grows in damp ground and in standing water up to 1 metre deep. Standing water does not flow. Plant facts like these give context to anyone reading about a Preveli beach tour.
Common reed spreads by horizontal runners, which are stems that creep sideways along the ground. A plant can spread 5 metres or more per year through these runners. The runners put down roots at regular intervals. Roots are the parts of a plant that take up water.
In the Danube Delta, common reed covers 1,700 square kilometres. A delta is low, flat ground built where a river meets the sea. The figure counts flat land, measured in squares one kilometre wide. That area gives a Preveli beach tour reader a sense of the plant’s reach.
The reed is a keystone species, which creates the homes, or habitat, that other species depend on. Reedbeds over 25 hectares are particularly valuable to Eurasian bittern, western marsh harrier and great reed warbler. One hectare equals 10,000 square metres, and a reedbed is a dense patch of reeds.
- Thatch: Reed is the primary source of thatch, a roof covering of dried stems, in Europe and beyond.
- Water filter: Reed root hairs, tiny threads on the roots, are excellent at filtering impurities out of waste water.
- Shelter: Dense reed stands can provide food and shelter for a large number of birds and insects.
Taken together, the plant facts show one grass that links water, wildlife and people. For a Preveli beach tour, the reed is a plant of wet places. The facts stay with the plant itself and where it grows.
What does the tamarisk bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour page adds the tamarisk, a tree that grows along streams, waterways and banks. Its leaves are scale-like, so they look like tiny scales, almost like those of junipers. These two facts give the plant a clear first description.
Tamarix aphylla is the Latin name of the largest tamarisk. This species is an evergreen tree. Evergreen means it keeps its leaves through the whole year. It can grow to 18 meters tall. A Preveli beach tour page can state that height in plain words and keep the plant name simple.
Pink to white flowers appear in dense masses on spikes at the branch tips. Dense masses means the flowers crowd close together. A spike is a long, narrow stem with flowers along it. The flowering season runs from March to September. Flower notes fit a Preveli beach tour write-up.
Tamarisks tolerate up to 15,000 ppm of soluble salt in the soil. Soluble salt is salt that dissolves in water, and ppm means parts per million. Tamarix aphylla can also spread through submerged stems, which are stems under water. These stems produce adventitious roots, meaning roots that grow from a stem.
A Preveli beach tour post can mention one sweet plant fact: honeydew. At certain times of year, scale insects on tamarisk twigs release this sweet substance. Scale insects are tiny insects that feed on plants. Honeydew from the tamarisk is also known locally as manna, another name for it.
- Garden use: Tamarisk species are used as decorative bushes, wind barriers, and shade trees.
- Bible text: Genesis 21:33, a verse, records Abraham planting a tamarisk at the place named Beer-sheba.
- Poem: In the Iliad, Odysseus buries the goods taken from a captured Trojan spy under a tamarisk tree.
Tamarix is native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. A native plant grows there naturally, and Eurasia means Europe and Asia together. That wide origin rounds out the plant facts for a Preveli beach tour post.
What does the oleander bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour gains plant background from the oleander, a shrub or small tree. It is native to the Mediterranean region, which means it grows there naturally. A shrub is a woody plant without one main trunk.
The oleander offers plain notes for a Preveli beach tour, and size comes first. It grows 2–6 metres tall. Its stems are erect, which means upright. As the plant matures, the stems splay outward. Splay means to spread apart and lean away from the centre of the plant.
The leaves grow in pairs or in whorls of three. A whorl is a ring of leaves around one point on a stem. The leaves are thick and leathery, which means firm and tough. Flowers grow in clusters at the end of each branch. A cluster is a tight group.
The plant tolerates both drought and inundation. Drought means a long dry spell, and inundation means flooding, when water covers the ground. It does not tolerate prolonged frost, which is freezing weather that lasts a long time. Such traits add depth to the Preveli beach tour plant story.
Two name facts stand out. Linnaeus first assigned the name Nerium oleander in 1753. The Greek name nerion is derived from the Greek word for water. Derived means the name grew from that word. These name facts add a botanical layer to any Preveli beach tour reading about the oleander.
- Cuttings: The oleander can be grown anew from cuttings, which are pieces cut from the parent plant.
- Galveston: Oleander was planted widely on Galveston Island after the Hurricane of 1900.
- Hiroshima: The city of Hiroshima has named the oleander as its official flower.
The oleander can be found in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions. These are climate zones, from hot ones to mild ones. The plant is also known as rose laurel, be-still tree or rosebay. These facts complete the plant background for a Preveli beach tour.
What does the chaste tree bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour is a coastal outing, and the chaste tree brings plant lore to it. Vitex agnus-castus is a shrub, which is a woody plant lower than a tree. Its native home is the Mediterranean region, where it grows naturally.
A common name is an everyday name, unlike a scientific one. This shrub is also called chasteberry, Abraham’s balm, lilac chastetree or monk’s pepper. Each of these four names points to the same plant, which plant scientists call Vitex agnus-castus. Such names make good background reading for a Preveli beach tour.
The name Vitex comes from the Latin word vieo. Latin is the old language of Rome, and vieo means to weave or tie up. In a scientific name, the second part is called the specific name, here agnus-castus. It repeats the word chaste in both Greek and Latin.
The writer Theophrastus mentioned the shrub in his work Enquiry into Plants, using the name ágnos for it. In ancient Greece, the chaste tree had an important role in Thesmophoria, a farming festival for women. Such old facts suit readers who like plant history beside a Preveli beach tour.
In Archaic Sparta, the chaste tree was brought into the cult of Artemis Orthia. Archaic means early in time, and a cult is a system of worship. Pausanias mentioned that Sparta’s wooden image of Asclepius was made from the chaste tree. Here an image means a statue.
- Flowers: The midsummer spikes of lavender flowers, which are long flower clusters, attract butterflies.
- Soil: The plant grows well in loamy soil, a mix of sand, silt and clay.
- Height: The shrub grows to a height of 1–5 m (3–16 ft).
A Preveli beach tour stays a coastal outing, and the chaste tree adds only background reading. Facts about the shrub and facts about a Preveli beach tour remain separate topics. The names, Latin roots and Greek records describe only a plant and its words.
What does a stavropegic monastery bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour and the word stavropegic belong to different subjects. A stavropegion is a monastery or parish that depends directly on a primate or Holy Synod. A primate is a church’s senior bishop, and a Holy Synod is its council of bishops.
A stavropegion is not under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. Jurisdiction means the right to govern. The name comes from a Byzantine tradition of summoning the Patriarch to place a cross at the foundation. Byzantine describes the Eastern Roman Empire and its culture. The Patriarch is the head of a church.
Stavropegic monasteries are a different class from lavras and patriarchal metochions. Lavras are the greatest monasteries, and a monastery is a place where monks share a life of prayer. A patriarchal metochion is a branch house tied to a Patriarch. None of these terms describes a Preveli beach tour.
Simonov Monastery was the first stavropegic monastery in the Russian Orthodox Church. Here, a church means the whole body of believers, not one building. Orthodox names the Eastern branch of Christianity. In 1561, Ivan the Terrible decreed that seven monasteries come before the rest. To decree is to give an official order.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has three stavropegic monasteries. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and Sofia Seminary answer directly to the Bulgarian Patriarch and Synod. A cathedral is a bishop’s main church, and a seminary is a school for priests. These church bodies sit far from the topic of a Preveli beach tour.
- Constantinople: Freedom from a local bishop became more common after the Council of Constantinople in 861.
- Nikon: Nikon governed three monasteries himself instead of placing each under an abbot, a monastery’s head.
- Serbia: Today the Serbian Orthodox Church counts two stavropegic monasteries in total.
Stavropegic houses were not always the holiest, the richest, or the largest monasteries. Church status is one thing; holiness, wealth and size are others. The word stavropegic belongs to church law, while a Preveli beach tour belongs to travel.
What does an abbot bring to a Preveli beach tour?
A Preveli beach tour is a trip, while an abbot is a church title with its own meaning. Monks form a community that lives in a monastery. Across different Western Christian traditions, an abbot heads an independent monastery for men.
A Preveli beach tour takes its name from a real place. The word abbot comes from very old languages. The title is derived from abba, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew word ab. Aramaic and Hebrew are two ancient languages, and the Hebrew word ab means father.
The title of abbot originated in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria. Monastic means linked to a monastery, so the English word for a female monastic head is abbess. An abbey is a monastery led by an abbot. A reader curious about a Preveli beach tour meets a word with a long past.
When a vacancy occurred, the diocese bishop chose the abbot from the monastery’s own monks. A vacancy is an empty post. Bishops are senior church leaders, and a diocese is the area under a bishop’s own care. A Preveli beach tour reader meets this as church history.
Monks choose the abbot from among the fully professed monks. These monks have made their final vows, or solemn promises. After the blessing, the abbot becomes the spiritual father and major superior of his monks under canon law. Canon law is the church’s rule book, and a major superior is a leader.
- Hegumen: In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, an abbot is called a hegumen.
- Archimandrite: In the Eastern Orthodox Church, only monastics are permitted to become archimandrites, a church title.
- Loccum Abbey: In 1163, Loccum Abbey in Hanover was founded as a house of the Cistercian monastic order.
Because of their office, the abbots of Cluny and Vendôme were cardinals of the Roman church. A cardinal is a senior church official. For a Preveli beach tour question, the abbot brings a word and a long history of church titles.
After a Preveli beach tour, which four questions get short answers?
A Preveli beach tour page ends with four short answers. A river delta is land built from river sediment. The Church of Crete is an Eastern Orthodox church. An oasis is a fertile area of a desert. The mastic tree is an evergreen shrub.
Before a Preveli beach tour, what is a river delta?
A river delta is a landform built from river sediment, meaning mud and sand carried by water. Its normal shape is a triangle. Sediment drops out of the slowing flow and builds up as alluvium, or river-laid soil. The Nile Delta gave the landform its name, because its shape matches the Greek capital letter delta.
Behind a Preveli beach tour, what is the Church of Crete?
The Church of Crete is an Eastern Orthodox church that covers the island of Crete. It is semi-autonomous, meaning partly self-governing, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. A patriarchate is the post held by a senior church leader. The Metropolis of Rethymno and Mylopotamos, a church district, is based at Rethymno.
On a Preveli beach tour, what is an oasis?
An oasis is a fertile desert area that keeps plants alive and gives animals a home. Springs, underground rivers or aquifers water an oasis, naturally or through man-made wells. An aquifer is rock that holds water underground. The Sahara Desert holds 90 major oases, the plural of oasis.
Near a Preveli beach tour, what is the mastic tree?
The mastic tree is an evergreen shrub or small tree, native to the Mediterranean Basin. Evergreen means leaves stay all year, and a shrub is a woody plant. It stands 1 to 5 metres high and smells strongly of resin, a sticky sap. Mastic, the aromatic resin, is harvested from cultivated trees in southern Chios.