Pagina 50 - Juliana_Book_eng

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from the seeds only if getting in touch with suitable species of fungi, which
supply them with substances needed for their development. Young plants
become dependent on the fungus with which they live in symbiosis. Fungi
provide the orchid with water and minerals and draw organic nutrients from
the plant.
The finger spotted orchids, ot heath spotted orchids as they are known in the
Slovenian language, were given their name after their finger-shaped tubers. In
(true) orchids, however, the tubers are round. The epithet ’spotted’refers to the
lower leaves, which are narrow lanceolate and dark-spotted. The flowers are
light to dark pink.
The plant grows in meadows, open forests and on forest edges from the
lowlands to the montane belt in the whole of Slovenia. It is distributed almost in the whole of Europe, Asia and
northern Africa.
In Slovenia, all orchids are highly endangered, given that fewer and fewer suitable sites can be found for them. They
cannot thrive in manured and unmown meadows.
Daphne blagayana Freyer – Blagay’s Daphne
There is no doubt that of all the Slovenian plant species, Blagay’s daphne has
attracted most attention and most ink-spilling in the 19th century. For several
centuries, this was our first botanical rarity, given that “it carried Carniola’s
honour and fame far into the wide world.”
The story began on May 22nd 1837, when a farmer from Gora near Polhov
Gradec brought a small branch of a yellow daphne to the Carniolan patriot
Rihard Ursini, the Earl Blagay of Polhov Gradec. As the earl did not know the
plant, he sent it on the ensuing day to his friend Henrik Freyer in the Carniolan
Provincial Museum in Ljubljana, together with a cover letter in which he wrote
that the species probably belonged to the genus Daphne. He also requested his
friend to identify the plant. And Freyer named the unknown species ‘Blagay’s
daphne’ after Earl Blagay.
In the following year, the place was visited by the Saxony king Frederik August II, and in the very same year (1838)
Blagay erected a unique monument in memory of the king, the royal visit and the daphne, which began to be also
called “the king’s flower”. Prof. Tone Wraber described it as “an old monument to the old botanical culture in
Slovenia”.
For more than thirty years, Gora above Polhov Gradec was the only natural site of Blagay’s daphne in Slovenia. Later
on, it was discovered elsewhere in Slovenia, and outside our country as well. The general distribution is now know to
extend widely in the Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece,
Bulgaria and Romania). The northwestern limit of the distributional range is in the Carnic Prealps in northwestern
Italy.
During his visit, Frederik August II expressed his wish and expectation that we, the Carniolans, will be capable of
protecting the daphne and prevent its destruction. This was probably the very first non-utilitaristic nature-conservation
thought in Slovenia, with the “king’s flower” also becoming the symbol of our conservationist activities.
Daphne cneorum L. – Garland Flower
Slovenia is home to six species of Daphne. The garland flower excels
particularly owing to its fragrant flowers. These evergreen little shrubs prosper
on dry and sunny slopes, in open forests and rocky grasslands.
The garland flower grows scatteredly in the montane belt almost throughout
Slovenia. It is fairly common in Polhograjski Dolomiti, in the Zasavje region
and at Kočevsko, but rare in the Alps, for it is found only in the Draga Valley
below Mt Begunjščica and on the slopes of Smolnik along an old mining pat
leading to the Valvasor House below Mt Stol. In Europe, it is distributed in the
southern and central parts of the Continent.
The dried flowers of this plant were once used as a mothproofer.
Dianthus sternbergii Capelli subsp. sternbergii – Sternberg's Pink
This is a gentle little plant, inhabiting thick and coarse screes. A particularly attractive contradiction is the fact that
carnations belong to a mainly Mediterranean genus and are therefore an echo of the warm Mediterranean in our
mountains.
In Slovenia, the Sternberg's Pink has a scattered distribution on fairly stable and already overgrown screes as well as in