Tubers of wild orchids are the main constituent of proper salep. Until very recently, you could often see the sad remains of an orchid stem and a few roots, lying beside a small hole where a collector had dug up the plant and taken the main tuber to be dried, discarding the rest. The prized tuber will have been ground into powder and used to make the hot salep drink or to fortify ice cream.

Tubers of all orchid species are harvested in the hills and meadows of Anatolia, and although the most popular are said to be the widespread Orchis mascula, the common early-purple orchid, Anacamptis morio, the green-winged orchid, and Ophrys sphegodes, the early spider orchid, the rarer ones are collected as well. In 2002, Prof Dr Ekrem Sezik, from Gazi University, calculated that if 15 to 20 tons of salep are used annually, 30 to 40 million orchids will have been collected. Some estimates put the number even higher. To find orchids thriving in the wild, you have had to search where the collectors do not venture, in cemeteries or among classical ruins – as long as the vegetation has not been sprayed with Roundup.

Since 2002, all orchids have been officially protected by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), and anyone caught digging up orchids in the wild can be heavily fined. Now, happily, the orchids are being cultivated legally in Turkey for the production of salep, notably in the areas around Samsun on the Black Sea, Aydın on the Aegean, and Burdur in the lake district of southwest Anatolia.

In 2021 a team from Samsun University led by Prof Dr Ömer Çalışkan replanted Serapias plants and reported that one of the orchid’s two tubers can be harvested at the beginning of the flowering period and the remaining roots, tuber and stem returned to the soil, where they will form a new tuber (sometimes even two or three) and survive until the next year.

This was not a completely new idea. Sezik had successfully tried it with Orchis simia, the monkey orchid, in his garden in Istanbul way back in 1983, and, indeed, some of the villagers of Taşköprü, near Kastamonu, and elsewhere have been collecting and replanting for many years so that they can continue to harvest the same area and not destroy whole orchid populations.

Harvesting and replanting is today being tried on a commercial scale, and the website of growers Salepevi at Yörükler (salepevi.com) shows large beds of Serapias orientalis, a brown-flowered species found all around the eastern Mediterranean, ready for harvest. Salepevi have also been cultivating other species including Ophrys apifera (arılı) and O. sphegodes, Anacamptis papilionacea (aslanağzı), A. morio, A. sancta and A. pyramidalis, as well as the lady orchid, Orchis purpurea. It will still be some years before the demand for salep can be satisfied from cultivated tubers, but at least there is a chance that more of the wonderful orchids of Turkey can survive and flourish undisturbed.

The new salep growers

Salep cultivation is fast gaining ground in Turkey, thanks to the initiatives of provincial agricultural institutions and researchers to reduce pressure on wild orchid populations.

This year the Aegean Agricultural Research Institute (Ege Tarımsal Araştırma Enstitüsü) registered Turkey’s first salep cultivars, bal yumru (Serapias vomeracea) and bol yumru (Orchis sancta). These yield up to four times more tubers per plant. Bucak in Burdur province, a historic centre of the salep trade, has worked with the institute since 2015 on cultivation trials.

In Samsun, on the Black Sea, the Ecological Producers’ Education and Solidarity Association (Ekomder) was founded in 2016 to train farmers and provide special permits. On the western Black Sea coast, a 2026 initiative in Zonguldak has established demonstration plots for 25 women farmers. New efforts extend as far as Hatay, where a women’s cooperative, Horanta Koop, announced a pilot crop this year.

Where to buy salep?

For now, the new wave of cultivated salep has yet to reach most kitchen cupboards.

● Among the few sources is Salepevi (salepevi.com) in Samsun, Turkey’s first organic-certified salep seller, founded by the people behind Ekomder.

● Çevik Salep (ceviksalep.com.tr) in Kastamonu also sells powder, dried tubers and seedlings.

● Wherever you buy, ask where it was grown, and look for kültür salebi (cultivated salep): illegal wild orchid harvesting is strictly prohibited and can carry a hefty fine of more than £1,000 per person, even for buyers.