High-mountain plants – attractive, colourful, sweetly scented

The Triglav National Park is home to several plant species that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

Do you ever wonder why flowers in the mountains are so diverse, why their stems are often hairy, leaves thick and flowers so sweetly scented, large and colourful? Is it merely to tone down the hardness of rocks and lure man to these miracle gardens?

Mountain plants can entrap and store the rapidly draining precipitation water; they have developed adaptations to cope with harsh weather, attract rare pollinators with colourful and fragrant flowers, and are food for animals, thanks to their taste and juicy texture. This is the most important task of all mountain plants, those rather inconspicuous as well as the prominent and eye-catching ones: edelweisses, bellflowers, orchids, gentians and others. Today we know that some of these plants are very rare and picking them would further threaten their existence. Any why does their existence matter so much? We need mountain plants to exist so that they can continue to perform their essential role in the ecosystem. And we need them to exist so that mountains can continue to be such a beautiful place.