Читать книгу Shorter Walks in the Dolomites. 50 varied day walks in the mountains онлайн

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A couple of flowering plant species are endemic to the Dolomites. Moretti’s bellflower (Campanula morettiana), with its rounded deep blue petals, nestles in rock crevices between 1500 and 2300m, while the succulent Dolomitic houseleek (Sempervivum dolomiticum) prefers sunny dry slopes and sports a bright green stalk and deep pink pointy flowers.

Precious aids to identification are Alpine Flowers by Gillian Price (Cicerone, 2014) and Alpine Flowers of Britain and Europe by C Grey-Wilson and M Blamey, alas long out of print.

Clockwise from top left: Unusual bear’s ear; devil’s claw; round-leaved pennycress

In terms of trees, beech grow up to about the 1000m line before conifers take over. Silver fir, spruce and several types of pine tree mingle with the Arolla pine, which can reach 2600m in altitude and is recognisable for its tufted needles and reddish bark. A further tree of note is the springy low-lying dwarf mountain pine, a great coloniser of scree, while another high achiever is the larch, the sole non-evergreen conifer. It loses its needles with the onset of winter in a copper-tinged rain and can reach up to 2500m. It has legendary origins, created by the forest animals and dwarves as a wedding gift for their generous benefactor and queen. The fronds and bunches of wild flowers they made it from quickly withered, but the queen cast her filmy veil over it – reproduced each spring as the fresh green lacy shoots.