Four Small Reminders in Late January

Late January can feel washed out, as if the world has been reduced to a narrow grayscale palette. Add to that the current state of the world and you might even say we are living in near-monochrome. On a winter walk today, everything around us seemed muted: sky, ground, even the air itself.

 

 

And then, along the path, four small interruptions in the monotone: a crocus pushing up early through the brown leaf litter, Liverwort (Hepatica nobilis) in its soft purple, a Primrose (Primula vulgaris) glowing impossibly yellow and teasing spring, and the layered fans of a Trametes versicolor mushroom on a stump in an almost perfect psychedelic display.

Colorful yes, and also reminders. The world isn’t actually colorless, even when it feels that way. Sometimes it just takes a few bright spots to pull you back to your senses and the spectrum that’s still around us.

So here they are—four small flashes of color from a winter walk. A brief reminder that even in late January, something is always stirring.

Ivy: A Scarf for the Trees

Scarves for humans, ivy for trees.

We’ve written about ivy before. In fact, we thought we were done with it. Ivy, after all, seems like one of those topics you either notice once and move on from, or never notice at all. Back in 2020, we wrote in this post asking whether ivy in Italy was a problem or simply part of the scenery. We concluded that felt reasonable at the time: Italians don’t really notice it.

And then, recently, we found ourselves thinking about ivy all over again.

This time it happened on a road trip home. Hours in the car have a way of loosening your grip on useful thought. You start noticing edges. Repetition. Patterns. Things that were there all along but you never really noticed before or perhaps notice on a gray day and you have a slight fever. As we drove south, descending out of the Dolomites, the landscape began to subtly change.

In places like Alta Badia and Val Gardena, everything feels carefully composed. Forests are forests. Meadows are meadows. Trees stand on their own, clearly defined, not competing for attention. There is a sense that nature here has been edited, gently but firmly. If something grows where it shouldn’t, it probably doesn’t stay long and we are good with that.

And then, somewhere along the drive, that clarity dissolves.

There isn’t a sign announcing it. No border marker. But suddenly ivy appears. Not the decorative ivy trained along a wall or framing a window. This is ivy with ambition. Ivy climbing trees along the roadside, wrapping trunks so completely that the tree’s trunk becomes grossly oversized. Ivy spilling over embankments, creeping up poles, threading itself into everything vertical.

By the time we reached Lombardy, the effect was undeniable. Kilometer after kilometer of trees with trunks wearing thick green coats. Once you noticed it, it was impossible not to see it everywhere. 

This wasn’t just a few neglected corners. It felt systemic. Almost intentional, though clearly not planned. (Of course, spaces along roadside are unloved, unowned spaces that tend to be the ones we see the most in a car, but still a lot of ivy is a lot of ivy.)

And that’s where our earlier conclusion about ivy started to feel incomplete.

Saying that Italians “don’t notice” ivy isn’t quite right. They notice plenty. They notice cracks in walls, paving stones missing in front of their house, crooked shutters, if I lost a half a kilo, or that our lights weren't on for two days. They just don’t always experience these things as problems. (Ok, for the last two they may poke fun of me for the weight gain or want to know where the hell were we?) Ivy, we realized, may fall into the don't-care category. It isn’t invisible. It’s simply not alarming.

Sitting in the car, watching tree after tree slide by, it occurred to us that ivy might actually read as something positive. Not wild or dangerous, but comforting. Familiar. And then the metaphor came to us: ivy as a scarf.

A scarf doesn’t fix you. It doesn’t correct a flaw or make you more efficient. It adds warmth and softens lines. It suggests care rather than control. Stay with with us here....ivy does something similar to a tree. It wraps it. It makes the tree look older, more lived-in, less exposed. 

And of course, Italians do like their scarves. Both in the fashion-blog sense, and in the practical, affectionate and warming way. A scarf is something you throw on without much thought, something that signals comfort more than polish. Ivy feels like that. It’s not there to impress. It’s there because it’s allowed to be.

The contrast with the Dolomites becomes sharper in this light. In curated landscapes, ivy feels out of place. It introduces ambiguity. Where does the tree end and the plant begin? Is the tree healthy? Is something being neglected? Will the ivy grow faster than the tree can escape it? Argh! Who will win? Those questions disrupt the clean narrative of “nature as spectacle.”

But along everyday roads, in the working countryside, nature seems less like a performance and more like a negotiation. Ivy stays until it truly causes trouble. It isn’t aggressively removed just because it complicates the view. It’s tolerated, even welcomed, as part of how things coexist.

This tolerance feels very Italian. It echoes other things we’ve noticed over the years. Indirect signs that state rules without pointing fingers. Buildings that age visibly rather than being endlessly refreshed. Situations that remain unresolved but somehow functional. There’s a comfort with overlap and ambiguity, with things sharing space without being fully disentangled.

Ivy embodies that sensibility perfectly. It refuses sharp boundaries. It blurs categories. It makes it harder to say, “This is exactly what this thing is.” And maybe that’s why it doesn’t register as a problem.

From a strictly ecological standpoint, one could argue about trees being “strangled,” about competition for light and nutrients. But the roadside ivy we kept seeing didn’t feel like an emergency waiting to happen. It felt like something that had been there a long time, growing at a pace no one felt compelled to interrupt.

Which brings us back to noticing.

Living in Italy long enough changes what you see. Ivy becomes a kind of visual marker. A signal that you’ve left the brochure version of the country and entered the lived-in one. You start to associate it with certain provinces, certain rhythms, certain kinds of neglect that aren’t really neglect at all.

Once you see ivy this way, it starts showing up everywhere. And not just on trees. You notice it in attitudes, in language, in how problems are allowed to exist without immediate correction. Some things, Italy seems to suggest, don’t need fixing. They need living with.

So yes, maybe Italians don’t notice ivy in the way an outsider might. Or maybe they notice it and simply read it differently. Not as a warning sign, but as atmosphere. Not as disorder, but as comfort. A scarf for the trees, pulled on without much fuss, doing its quiet work of softening the landscape as it passes by.

Sometimes we really wonder if ivy really is the superglue that holds Italy together.

Lanzarote: Notes from a Brief Botanical Infatuation

Two Worlds, Two Climates ~ Group 1: Plants Seen Out and About ~ 

Group 2: Patterns from the Jardín de Cactus ~ Why These Plants Stayed with Us

Left: Plants we saw out and about on Lanzarote.

Right: Plants we saw in the Jardín de Cactus.

We can’t help it. Plants call to us to have their photos taken. You could call it travel-induced plant euphoria. I guess changing your biome wakes up one’s senses. And Lanzarote certainly counts as a biome change. A big one.

The last time we felt this moved by plants was in Japan in May 2025. We wrote about those in Temples and Shrines, Gardens and Connection to Nature in Japan.

A few days on this volcanic island and suddenly we had enough plant photos to justify at least one composite image of plants. But then we stepped foot in the beautiful Jardín de Cactus | CACT Lanzarote where we proceeded to snap hundreds of more photos. The best of the cactus garden photos are in the second composite image.

Two Worlds, Two Climates

For the climate nerds (we see you, because we are you):

• Lanzarote → BWh hot desert climate + dry Macaronesian ecoregion
• Bergamo → Cfa humid subtropical climate + temperate mixed forest ecoregion

We had to look up Macaronesia. Didn’t even know the term. The Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores, and Cape Verde are all part of this biogeographical region. Naturally, our first reaction seeing the word Macaronesian was to confuse it with the country Micronesia. How ignorant we are in geography! But now we’re obsessed, because this little chain of islands out in the Atlantic is home to plants you simply don’t see elsewhere.

While standing on Lanzarote, you can almost feel the ecological isolation. The island is small — only about 50 km by 20 km — and dry. Very dry. Depending on where you are, annual rainfall averages somewhere around 100–200 mm a year. Bergamo gets five to six times that without even trying. No wonder Lanzarote plants have attitude.

The island of Lanzarote doesn’t have the kind of tall peaks—think 1500 meters and above—that force moist trade-wind air upward to form clouds and rain. Without that orographic lift, most of the moisture simply passes by, leaving Lanzarote in its famously dry state while neighboring Canary Islands with higher mountains capture far more precipitation. For more about Lanzarote, see Lanzarote - In the Layers.

Group 1: Plants Seen Out and About

In this category, we include plants you can easily see in gardens, along roadsides, and even on beaches.

Phoenix canariensis

The Canary Island date palm. Native, iconic, and everywhere — and if you’re from a place where palms are landscaping luxuries, seeing them casually lining roads feels like cheating.

Euphorbiaceae Running the Show

By far, the family we saw the most — both in the wild and later in the cactus garden — was Euphorbiaceae. Lanzarote seems determined to make sure you notice this. Two members of this family:

• Tabaiba dulce (Euphorbia balsamifera) The official plant symbol of Lanzarote. It’s an endemic shrub perfectly suited to the island’s dry slopes and lava fields. Knobby looking, architectural, and somehow both tough and delicate. A sort of botanical embodiment of the island itself.
• Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) It amazes us to see these grown outside while I struggle to keep ours alive through January. Some people vacation to relax; we vacation to be humbled by horticulture.

When "Weeds" Go International

Some plants we saw are not native at all — but show up so often that you start thinking they belong there.

• Rumex lunaria (family Polygonaceae) A known invasive on Lanzarote — though the story is more complicated. Recent genetic work shows that most individuals on the island descend from plants originating on El Hierro, suggesting a human‑mediated introduction rather than natural dispersion (2023 phylogeographic study). Local oral history claims it was brought to northern Lanzarote in the early 20th century, possibly the 1930s, as a drought‑tolerant forage plant (Bernardos et al.). Botanists didn’t formally record the species on Lanzarote until 1970 (Per Sunding) (research summary), but by the 1980s it was already spreading across disturbed volcanic slopes, including inside Timanfaya. Today it is often treated as a “translocated native” — a plant native to the Canary Islands but introduced to this particular island by people, now behaving invasively in fragile terrain.
• Nicotiana glauca (family Solanaceae) Tree tobacco — a plant we spotted in abandoned lots, roadside edges, and dry ravines. It isn’t native to the Canary Islands; N. glauca originates from South America. It was introduced globally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often as an ornamental shrub, and quickly naturalized in warm, arid climates where it thrives on disturbance. In the Canary Islands it is considered an alien, naturalized species, spreading easily through volcanic soils and human-altered landscapes (GBIF). Fast-growing and drought-tolerant, it has become a familiar presence on roadsides and in the forgotten corners of Lanzarote.

Lichens in a Desert?

Yep. Lanzarote has surprising lichen diversity. In Timanfaya we were especially struck by pale crusts and branching gray forms. One of the species associated with volcanic substrates in Macaronesian islands is Stereocaulon vesuvianum, a lichen well adapted to harsh, mineral-rich lava fields. It looks ghostly and delicate, yet survives where most plants never would.

The lichens are pioneers. They begin the long, slow process of turning rock into something resembling soil. By breaking down volcanic surfaces through chemical weathering, trapping dust, and building up tiny bits of organic matter, they quietly prepare the ground for whatever comes next.

They’re the first hint of what might someday become something lush. Not soon, not quickly, not on any human schedule — but lichens are the patient opening act that makes future plant life possible.

Names of plants in the composite image:

• Row 1
• Foliose form of lichen on lava perhaps Ramalina.
• [Amaranthaceae] Suadea vera
• [Anacardiaceae] Schinus molle
• [Apocynaceae] Stephanotis floribunda
• [Araucariaceae] Araucaria heterophylla
• Row 2
• [Arecaceae] Phoenix canariensis
• [Asparagaceae] Agave americana
• [Asparagaceae] Dracaena drago
• [Asteraceae] Launaea arborescens
• [Boraginaceae] Cordia sebestena
• Row 3
• [Crassulaceae] Sedum morganianum
• [Euphorbiaceae] Codiaeum variegatum
• [Euphorbiaceae] Euphorbia balsamifera
• [Euphorbiaceae] Euphorbia pulcherrima
• [Moraceae] Ficus macrophylla
• Row 4
• [Myrtaceae] Psidium sp.
• [Polygonaceae] Rumex lunaria
• [Solanaceae] Nicotiana glauca
• [Vitaceae] Vitis vinifera - Malvasia volcanica
• [Zygophyllaceae] Zygophyllum fontanessii

Group 2: Patterns from the Jardín de Cactus

The cactus garden is a lesson in geometry. It’s also a lesson in humility: you think you’re photographing a plant, but what you’re actually photographing is the pattern it creates. Spirals, ribs, shadows, and repeating forms. Barrel cacti arranged like green dominos. Opuntia pads making accidental abstract art. 
And everywhere, that stark contrast: bright green against black volcanic lapilli.

The garden is curated, sure, but still very much in conversation with the wild landscape around it. Stand in the right spot and you see a cactus rib echoing a terraced volcanic slope behind it. Or vice versa.

Why These Plants Stayed with Us

Lanzarote overwhelmed us with its scenery. After the initial wow moment(s), you start to slow pick out plants and understand their niche. Each plant showing you how life adapts to dryness, wind, and volcanic dust. And once you start noticing, you can’t stop. The layers of Lanzarote are discussed in the post, Lanzarote – In they Layers.

It’s a kind of travel shift: suddenly, we’re comparing our own region’s plants to those here, thinking about ecoregions and rainfall, and remembering that the planet arranges itself in patterns we barely pay attention to.

And maybe that’s the joy of travel: you leave home for a few days, you come back with too many plant photos and a renewed respect for humidity and horticulture.

If we ever get our poinsettia to survive winter in Bergamo, we’ll consider it a victory. But Lanzarote? Lanzarote doesn’t even break a sweat.

For more plant-related wanderings, see:

• Temples and Shrines, Gardens and Connection to Nature in Japan
• Sintra in Three Days - Plants and Patterns
• Selected Plants from Our Iceland Trip

Val Grosina and Alpe Dosdè Hike Plant Notes

Informational Signs ~ Plants We Spotted

On our Val Grosina and Alpe Dosdè Two-Day Hike, we spotted a number of the usual flower suspects, as noted below. But what caught our attention were the impressive informational signs about the plants and environments in the valley, especially on Hike 1 and in Val Verva. They talk about meadow ecosystems that, on first glance, seemed unassuming and insignificant but after reading these signs, they give you a sense of their importance. Well done who ever created these signs!

Val Verva Informational Signs

Boscaglia ad Ontano verde

• Boscaglia ad Ontano verde means “Green alder shrubland”. This sign is where Alpe Verva meets Val Viola.
• Alder (Alnus viridis) is in the birch family (Betulaceae)
• “Megaforbie,” i.e., tall, dense, herbaceous plants that love rich, damp ground.
• The flexible branches of alder resist damage from moving snow in avalanche or heavy-snow zones.
• Plants you will find with alder:
• Senecio fuchsii — Fuchs’s Ragwort, a yellow-flowered perennial.
• Petasites albus — White Butterbur, a plant with big, broad leaves.
• Adenostyles alliariae — Alpine Adenostyles, a perennial with tall with pink blooms.
• Aconitum napellus — Monkshood has striking purple flowers that are highly toxic.

Pascolo Pingue

• Pascolo pingue means “rich pasture”, highly productive, rich-forage species.
• Balanced grazing pressure to keep the plant mix diverse and nutritious.
• Key forage grasses pictured in the sign are:
• Poa alpina — a hardy alpine bluegrass, nutritious and resilient.
• Phleum alpinum — an alpine timothy grass, good for hay and grazing.
• Festuca rubra — a red fescue, adaptable and palatable.

Pascolo umido

• Pascolo umido means “wet pasture”, which is a mix of meadows and grazing areas where the soil stays moist for much of the year.
• Typical wet pasture plants include:
• Cirsium palustre — marsh thistle, tall with spiny leaves and purple blooms.
• Eupatorium cannabinum — hemp agrimony, pink‑flowered and loved by pollinators.
• Filipendula ulmaria — meadowsweet, fragrant white blossoms, often near streams.
• Caltha palustris — marsh marigold, bright yellow flowers in spring.
• This sign is a reminder that these soggy meadows aren’t “waste land” — they’re living reservoirs of water and wildlife, worth protecting for both nature and people.

Praterie a Carice ricurva

• Praterie a Carice ricurva means “Grasslands/meadows of curved sedge”
• Carex curvula — curved sedge is a hardy grass‑like plant in the Cyperaceae family. Its ochre, curled leaf tips are caused by a specific fungus (Clathrospora elynae), a natural part of this ecosystem.
• Found high in the alpine zone, above the tree line, where the climate is too harsh for woody plants.
• Other plants found with curved sedge:
• Senecio doronicum — bright yellow composite, often on granite soils.
• Phyteuma hemisphaericum — “raponzolo alpino,” with striking spherical violet flower heads.
• Senecio incanus — pale yellow‑white blooms, adapted to wind and cold.
• Leucanthemopsis alpina — the alpine daisy, a cheerful white flower of rocky meadows.

Praterie palustri

• Praterie palustri means “Marshy meadows”
• Plant communities in flooded or waterlogged zones — often called crelofore (cotton‑grass stands) and cariceti (sedge stands). Not especially valuable for grazing, but ecologically important.
• Main plant groups shown present in these meadows:
• Eriofori (Eriophorum spp.) — cotton‑grasses with fluffy white seed heads, in the wettest spots.
• Carici (Carex spp.) — sedges that thrive in saturated soils.
• Trifolori (Trifolium spp.) — clovers adapted to damp meadows.
• Giunchi (Juncus spp.) — rushes, often in slightly less flooded patches.
• Over time, plants deposit peat that gradually raises the ground level. As the soil rises and dries, the area loses its marsh characteristics and shifts toward other meadow types.

Rododendreto

• Rododendreto means “Rhondodenron stand/scrub/thicket”
• In Italian, rododentreto is a technical habitat name built from rododendro (rhododendron) + the suffix ‑eto, which denotes a plant community dominated by that species — much like querceto for oak woodland or castagneto for chestnut grove. In English habitat descriptions, the equivalent construction is usually “X stand” or “X thicket” — for example, “oak stand” or “juniper stand.”
• Key species appearing with rhododendron:
• Mirtillino delle Alpi (Vaccinium myrtillus) — bilberry, with edible dark berries.
• Ginepro della zona (Juniperus sibirica) — a low, creeping juniper adapted to cold.
• Carice vaginata (Carex vaginata) — a sedge that thrives in alpine soils.
• This is the climax vegetation here — meaning the most stable, complex, and biomass‑rich plant community that naturally develops in this zone. Found above the larch and stone pine forests, where trees can’t survive due to harsher climate.

Rododendreto in fase evolutiva

• Rododendreto in fase evolutiva means “rhododendron shrubland transitioning to forest”
• This is unstable vegetation — it developed after pastures were abandoned or disturbed. Without grazing or other management, shrubs like Rhododendron ferrugineum (red rhododendron, or “rose of the Alps”) spread quickly.
• Breaking down the name Vaccinio-Rhododendretum ferrugineum
• Vaccinium is the botanical genus that includes bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus), bog bilberries (V. uliginosum), cranberries, and related ericaceous shrubs.
• The ‑o ending is just the Latin linking vowel used in phytosociological names.
• Rhododentretum ferrugineum = a plant association (‑etum) dominated by Rhododendron ferrugineum (alpenrose).
• Putting it together means: “The plant association dominated by Rhododendron ferrugineum with a significant presence of Vaccinium species.”
• In phytosociology, the formal name of an association often lists two (or more) diagnostic or dominant species. In this case, this tells ecologists that the shrubland isn’t pure rhododendron — it’s a mixed ericaceous community typical of acidic, subalpine slopes.

Plants Spotted

[Asteraceae] Cirsium spinosissimum



[Asteraceae] Doronicum grandiflorum

[Asteraceae] Leucanthemopsis alpina 

 
[Asteraceae] Senecio incanus



[Boraginaceae] Myosotis sp.


[Campanulaceae] Phytheuma hemisphaericum



[Caryophyllaceae] Cerastium alpinum


[Crassulaceae] Sempervivum montanum


rub
[Cyperaceae] Eriophorum scheuzhzeri



[Gentianaceae] Gentianella sp.



[Onagraceae] Epilobium angustifolium



[Ranunculaceae] Aconitum napellus



[Rosaceae] Geum reptans



[Rosaceae] Rubus ideaeus

We found a lot of this raspberries on our two day hike in the lower elevation parts of the trail. We also had a lot of blueberries, both Vaccinium uliginosum and Vaccinium myrtillus.



[Saxifragaceae] Micranthes engleri


 
[Saxifragaceae] Saxifraga byroides



[Viburnaceae] Sambucus racemosa

Weller Vases and Chlorphytum

  

Left and center: Weller Claywood vases with spider plants. Right: The location of Zanesville, Ohio 300 million years ago.

These Weller Claywood vases always bring a smile to our faces. First, they are cute when grouped together. Second, they survived a transatlantic crossing. And third, they go well with Chlorophytum.

We are at that point in our lives where we’ve regressed to the plants of our childhood, simple plants that can be grown in water for indefinite periods of time – as these spider plants can. They don’t complain too badly if you forget to water them. These Chlorophytum comosum are in glass jars inside the Weller vases.

Weller Pottery was founded by Samuel Augustus Weller in the 1870s in Ohio. The company mass-produced art pottery until about 1920, and producing commercial lines until the pottery closed in 1948. The Claywood line was one of Weller Pottery's well-known decorative series, which appeared around 1910.

Side note: We always wondered why Ohio was a center of American pottery, and particularly Zanesville. The area has important deposits of clay and developed into an important transportation hub thanks to first the rivers and then the railroads passing through. In addition, the country was rapidly modernizing at the end of the 19th century and there was an increased demand for utilitarian and decorative ceramics.

A fourth point for a smile on our faces: the clay that went into these pots came from the deposits laid down during the Pensylvannian period (roughly 318 to 299 million years ago)! At that time, Ohio was part of a flat coast plain with extensive swamps and floodplains. Check out the location of Ohio in this map of the USA 300 million years ago.


Other posts on Weller: Weller Claywood and Skimmia foremanii, Weller Clinton Ivory, Peters and Reed Moss Aztec Vases and Dryopteris, Weller Pearl and Lavandula stoechas Dried Flower Spikes, and Weller Louwelsa Vase with Rudbeckia nitida.

  

Weller Claywood vases with spider plants.

Hiking Ol Murlansì - From Colognola di Casazza to Monte Ballerino and Colli San Fermo

Overview ~ Description ~ Plants ~ Photos

 

 

Top left: View from Trail 613, north toward Lago Endine.
To right: Climbing the part of trail 613 called Ol Murlansì - a wall constructed to permit passage through the cliffs.

Bottom left: View from Colli di San Fermo hill south toward the Po River Valley plain and Val Cavallina.

Bottom right: A trail on Monte Ballerino filled with anemones.

We can see Colli San Fermo from our windows and decided that we should go check it out. We did the same with Monte Guglielmo (see Monte Guglielmo Hike) and Monte Misma (see A Walk from Albino to Bergamo via Monte Misma) and Canto Alto (see Bergamo to Canto Alto – A Sunday Hike). Okay, you get the idea, we fixate on what we see from our windows. This is our third official “hike” of 2024.

Overview

Duration: 3.75 hours
Elevation: 833 m
Length: 8.5 km
Location: Colli di San Fermo, BG, Italy

Description

We parked in Casazza just before you reach the south end of Lago Endine (Val Cavallina). Specifically, we drove up to the Santuario della Madonna del Monte Carmelo and parked behind it (uphill) in some free parking spots (here). At this point you are about at 420 m. You still must reach Monte Ballerino at 1275 m, or about 855 m (2800 ft) left to go. From the point you leave the car until you reach Monte Ballerino, it’s 3 km of all uphill. This is trail 613.

This hike does have the locally famous part called “ol Murlansì”, a sort of stone retaining wall that takes you up and through the imposing cliffside (Corna di Colognola) that Monte Ballerino sits on. Some of the sections of the trail have chains to grab on to if you need a little help or would rather concentrate on the chains rather than the drop-off – like me.

This hike made us think of Kendall Katwalk (and Beyond) Hike a bit. Ah, the good old days of hiking around Seattle.

Starting off, there wasn’t much flora to look at. At this time of year, the hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia - carpino nero) and ash (Fraxinus sp. - frassino) forests haven’t leafed out and the ground is bleak and brown. But, as you reach the base of the cliffs, you start seeing more flowers, enough that we felt like taking out our cameras.

When we left the car it was warm and sunny. Up top, it was foggy and cool. Not many views for us today! And, one of the main places to eat Al Colle Pizzeria was running in skeleton-crew mode. No pizzas, only a panino. The upside was we were the only ones there!

After eating and taking a quick look at the helmet-shaped church (Cappella Virgo Fidelis - Lucerna Carabinieri), we headed back to Casazza via a different trail – following the indications for Prati Cambia and Casazza – to make a loop. 

Plants

By the way, our reference for plants that we use often is this: ref


[Amaryllidaceae] Galanthus nivalis

[Asparagaceae] Scilla bifolia

[Boraginaceae] Pulmonaria angustifolia

[Brassicaceae] Cardamine heptaphylla

 

[Brassicaceae] Cardamine pentaphyllos

 

[Ericaceae] Erica carnea

[Liliaceae] Erythronium dens-canis

[Polygaceae] Polygala chamaebuxus

 

[Primulaceae] Primula acaulis

[Primulaceae] Primula veris

[Ranunculaceae] Anemonoides nemorosa

  

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus niger

 

[Ranunculaceae] Hepatica nobilis

 

[Thymelaeaceae] Daphne mezereum

Photos

  

Views of Trail 613 - Corna di Colognola and the part called Ol Murlansì.

  

Views from the Trail from Colli San Fermo to Casazza passing through Prati Cambia.

  

Map of the area and our hiking details.

 

A helmet-shaped church in Colli San Fermo and an altar in the pasture.

A view of the Corna di Colognola with the antennas of Monte Ballerino visible. Trail 613 climbs up to Ballerino.