TROPICAL PLANTS

The Garden of Paradise is humanity’s dream, already written in the Bible and other sacred books. Almost all religions throughout the world know the harmony of humans and nature. As humans encroach on nature, this harmony is destroyed and a primal force arises in its place. What happened to people that we can no longer achieve this harmony?

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-63-3

MEADOWS - STEEP AND COLOURFUL GRASSLANDS

The meadows, once indispensable colourful treasures of the landscape and crucial goods of the peasant man, are now quite at risk. Excessively early mowing, ensilage and hay baling impoverish plant species diversity. Traditional knowledge which enabled the sustainable use of space and was the primary link that connected man to nature is also being lost. Although traditional meadow mowing was a heavy job and demanded a lot of time, it was better nature conservation than today's highly mechanized mowing. Each phase of work required skills, good knowledge and understanding of the environment. At the same time, specific tools have been developed. All this together led to a successful work Mowing was at the same time a social event where people interconnected intergenerational and from the nearby and distant surroundings. They helped each other, exchanged experiences and have a good time after the work was finished. On tasks like mowing, people connected with each other and with the nature that was giving them home and food. The meadows in Slovenia were created and remained precisely because of human land development.

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-59-6

BEES AND PLANTS

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-60-2 (pdf)

ILLUSTRATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF ENDEMIC AND ENDANGERED PLANT SPECIES IN SLOVENIA

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-56-5

UNIVERSITY BOTANIC GARDENS LJUBLJANA AND GSPC (TARGET 8)

The Botanic garden in Ljubljana exchanges seeds of plants on the basis of written sources with other gardens from the very beginnings of its activity in 1810. The first printed list of seeds was given in 1889. Since then, this exchange has been documented. Since 1994, the University Botanic Gardens Ljubljana lists the seeds collected in the wild in the list of seeds regularly in a separate section. In the seed bank in a dry place is located about 3000 different plant species with over 12000 bags. In the permanent seed bank, we already store 702 species, which is 20,3 % of the flora of Slovenia.

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-54-1

DAFFODILS IN SLOVENIA

“In recent years, I have made it a habit to visit on the Feast of Corpus Christi ... Despite the nice, warm weather of early summer, it seemed as fresh snow had fallen, as the green slopes looked as if covered by sugar ... Multitudes of white daffodils covered all the mountain meadows, daffodils so beautiful and so abundant that I have never, no where, seen a flower be as predominant to such an extent. Daffodils as far as the eye could see, daffodils everywhere ... I was climbing a true-to-life daffodil mountain. I walked through the white daffodil gardens to the top of Golica every Feast of Corpus Christi, year after year, as if on a pilgrimage to the altar of flowers. Filled with pious memories, I listened and gazed on the land of my fathers.”
 
Julius Kugy: The Life of a Mountaineer (1968)

Poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus L. subsp. radiiflorus (Salisb.) Baker) is also known by other names: poet’s narcissus, nargis, pheasant’s eye and others. Academic Dr Milko Matičetov (1979) found around 120 local names for it. But daffodils do not grow only in Karavanks. They are just best known in Karavanks because of their abundance. They can be found in Karst, Slovenian Istria, Kočevsko, Prekmurje and other places. They are certainly most abundant in Karavanks above Jesenice, but they grow in other locations on grassy surfaces, pastures and meadows. With smaller density of populations, they are more accessible, as we can walk up to almost any flower, look and it, and compare the intraspecies diversity. On Golica and surrounding areas, this is often too difficult, as there are so many daffodils that you can not even walk among them. So we can only watch these countless populations from their edges, where the green is encroaching on them, and where we can still walk without trampling their precious white flowers.

The genus of daffodils is relatively large and includes about 26 species, while some authors list even more species – over 60. The taxonomy of daffodils is relatively complex due to the large number of garden varieties, natural hybrids and many years of cultivation resulting in numerous new combinations. Nevertheless, this is a genus with a typical Mediterranean distribution. Even though there are relatively few species in this particular genus compared to some other plant genera, it is the genus Narcissus that has a remarkable diversity in the species potential. However, in this relatively low number of species, gardeners and breeders found numerous cultivars, and then cultivated thousands more. Daffodils are one of the oldest and most beautiful spring bulbous plants, and one of the most prized garden plants for centuries.

Over 25,000 cultivars have been used in horticulture for several centuries. There are many common names for daffodils in Slovenia and throughout the world.

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-53-4

WILD ROSES DIVERSITY (ROSA L.) IN SLOVENIA

The wild rose genus is very large and includes around 200 species, which grow in temperate and subtropical areas of the northern hemisphere to tropical Asia. Only one species also grows in tropical Africa. Wild roses are predominantly deciduous and rarely evergreen shrubs, they can be climbers and are more or less thorny. Only a bit over a tenth of them grow in Slovenia, but despite that, identifying and determining them is no easier. In fact, it might be even more difficult, because Slovenia is actually a windy country, where the influences of the Alps, the Adriatic Sea (the Mediterranean), the Pannonic Plain and the Dinaric Mountains, extending along the Balkan Peninsula, are joined. There is a great interspecies diversity in various genera that are widespread in Slovenia, and it is even more pronounced with wild roses. On a very small area of 20,256 km2, there are around 3,500 different plant species, which puts Slovenia among floristically very rich areas. Some even call it the hotspot of Europe. Wild roses and their intraspecies and interspecies diversity definitely belong at the very top of diversity. They are present in every phytogeographic area of Slovenia, which further contributes to their diversity.

Text in Slovenian and English

ISBN: 978-961-6822-52-7