Pagina 68 - Juliana_Book_eng

68
History. He regularly sent the new species to his botanical friends and mentors
to Klagenfurt, Vienna and Leipzig. One of such plants was a Scabiosa species,
which he duly forwarded to the botanist N. T. Host in Vienna from the
Polhograjski Dolomiti. Host described it and named it after its founder. He did
not know, however, its exact locality, but merely wrote that the plant's natural
habitat are Carniolan mountains and Alpine basins.
The typical locality of Scabiosa hladnikiana is Goljek Hill in Polhograjski
Dolomiti. The plant was found there by the botanist Alfonz Paulin, who wrote
that he gathered it at its typical locality.
The plant reaches up to 1m in height, its stem leaves are softly stellately hairy,
lyrate, with a large and distinct terminal lobe, while the lateral lobes are often absent. The globose inflorescences with
bluish-purple flowers are surrounded by involucral bracts. The species prospers in warm localities, meadows,
scrublands and in open forests from the lowlands to the montane belt in the Dinaric, prealpine and predinaric regions
(Polhograjski Mts, Idrijsko, Zasavje, along the lower course of the Savinja River and on the Slovenian and Croatian
sides of Gorjanci Mts).
The species carrying Franc Hladnik’s name is one of the ca. 70 plants which are endemic to Slovenia.
Scopolia carniolica Jacq. – Nightshade-leaved Henbane or Henbane
Bell
As long ago as in 1550, the famous Italian physician P. A. Mattioli found a
plant on Mt Sabotin above Solkan that reminded him of the toxic belladonna.
Considerable time thereafter,the plant was named after the renowned naturalist
I. A. Scopoli and the former province of Carniola.
In Slovenia, the common scopolia thrives in beech forests and in wet gorges.
The general distribution extends to southeastern Europe, while its near relatives
can be found only in Asia.
An extremely rare and endemic form of the common scopolia was found in the
forests around Turjak by the botanist Franc Hladnik and eventually named after
him as Hladnik's Scopolia (Scopolia carniolica f. hladnikiana); it differs from
the common scopolia in the colour of flowers, which are greenish-yellow both
inside and outside. This form has only a few sites: Kolovec near Kamnik, below Mt Lubnik near Škofja Loka, the
Idrija Valley, and above Borovniški Pekel.
Telekia speciosa (Schreb.) Baumg. – Great Yellow Ox-eye
“The most splendid Telekia, just like a sunflower, “ fascinated Julius Kugy
during his stay in Juliana.
The great yellow ox-eye is distributed in the eastern Carpathians, the Balkans,
Asia Minor and the Caucasus; to the west it reaches to Slovenia, where it is
indigenous in the Dinaric, predinaric and submediterranean regions. It was
introduced or is subspontaneous in the Alpine and prealpine regions. In places,
it is planted as an ornamental plant in gardens, from where it may escape into
the wild.
The largest indigenous sites of this plant in Slovenia are on forest edges and
clearings at Snežniška planota. It seems unusual, however, that it can also be
found at the Savica in the Bohinj Corner; it was most probably brought there
by soldiers during World War I with hay transported by a military ropeway to Mt Komna.
Trollius europaeus L. subsp. europaeus – Globeflower
The plants that are medicinal, edible, useful, toxic, harmful or just simply
beautiful have several folk names. One of such graceful, although toxic, plants
is the globeflower. The famous naturalist and museum custodian Henrik
Freyer, for example, used the word “mountain flower” for it more than 150
years ago, while in the area of Jesenice it was known as “golden apple” ... The
botanist Fran Jesenko, on the other hand, found it similar to a sleigh bell.
And where does its scientific name come from? In one of his works, the Swiss
physician and naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) wrote this name as
Trollblum (probably meaning “spherical flower”). The physician Johann
Bauhin (1541-1613), on the other hand, “translated” this term into Latin as
Trollius flos.