Читать книгу Walking in the Cevennes. 31 walks and the Tour of Mont Lozere онлайн

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The higher grassy slopes of both the Aigoual and Mont Lozère have carpets of daffodils, narcissi, hairy anemones and crocuses in the early spring, and even in the Alps I have never seen so many varieties of orchids, sometimes covering whole fields. Later tall yellow gentians, arnica, pink willow herb, blue monkshood and various species of daisy replace them, but in many places the sheep have cropped the grass clean.

Above 1500m both mountains, but particularly Mont Lozère, are covered in heather, myrtle bushes, gorse and broom; in some areas, peat bogs hosts their own species of feathery grasses and delicate white wind flowers.

The vegetation that has grown swiftly in the last 50 years is broom – the dense bushes cover the slopes in June with their yellow flowers and peculiar smell. For many Cevenese this brash yellow symbolises the gradual decay of the region, as it grows on the slopes which were once used for pasturing cattle and sheep – now, with the huge flocks disappearing, the persistent broom has taken over, and the only way to get the land back to pasture is to burn the bushes.