The Ancient Laurel of Apostle Philip

Bay laurel is the herb in the kitchen cupboard, usually a shrub and rarely a tree of any size. This one is eight metres around. It stands at Pente Litharia, Five Rocks, about three kilometres west of Omodos down a minor road, beside the oldest of that village's country churches, the Chapel of Apostle Philip. How old the laurel is depends on who is asked, and the two answers are far apart. A Limassol heritage site calls it roughly 1,000 years. Omodos's own village site will say only that it is a few centuries. Neither counts rings, so the vaguer figure stays vague here rather than being sharpened into the flattering one. Local tradition holds that the site was a shrine to Apollo before it was Christianised, and points at the laurel as what survived the change, laurel being the tree sacred to Apollo in Greek myth. Both accounts repeat that story and neither is archaeology. What is dated is the building: the chapel was renovated in 1773. Height is given as 17 metres on one page and 10 metres on another from the same source, so take the crown as tall rather than measured. It stands in open country with no gate, no ticket and nobody to ask, which is roughly how it has been since somebody first decided this spot was worth a chapel.