Wild flowers of the Aurunci Park

Travellers who enjoy trekking and walking in the nature can certainly enjoy an amazing show during the spring time on the Aurunci. Fields are carpeted with fennel, clover, wild iris, myrtle and at many types of Mediterranean wild orchid. In fact a thousand or more species of plants will be in flower by late May. The flora is particularly rich with an estimate of 1900 species some of which very rare and endemic. The regional park is very famous for its botanical complexity and can display amazing spring blooming with two thousands registered species. Within the park there more than 50 species of orchids and some 20 natural hybrids, which alone represent an exceptional attraction of this area.

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The orchids are able to display fully all their beauty appearing in all their full, joyous and cheerful spring colours in the April-June period. In the space of few miles this territory offers an amazing variety of landscapes from cultivated olive tree groves to woods of holm-oak to beech woods accompanied by fields of orchids and saxifrages on the mountain ridges. More gentle cliffs are home to authentic botanical rarities such as the ‘Sternbergia Lutea’, ‘Euphorbia Serrata’, ‘Daphne Sericea’ and ‘Bupleurum Rolii’. The flowering of the wild orchids add something magic to these mountains which makes excursions very special. Whoever enjoys nature and botanic will find a real paradise here of rare and uncommon species which are found only here.

Among some of the most beautiful we find the Orchis italica, Orchis Aurunca, Ophris lacaitae, Ophris promontorii, Ophris sphecodes; some of them are natural hybrids such as: Ophris rasetii, Ophris lacaitae x Ophris tetraloniae, Ophris lacaitae x Ophris holoserica, Ophris terrae laboris.

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The smallest of them are miniature orchids which have got nothing to envy in terms of beauty to the larger and most famous exotic species. All of them can be easily fond at the edge of of dense woodlands. Whilst exploring and trekking it is easy to spot other species along the rural paths and shepherds routes such as the Centaurea rupestris and species found mainly in southern Italy such as the Campanula tanfanii, Solenanthus apenninus and Sempervivum italicum.

Among the varied landscape with canyons, Mediterranean forests and open wild fields, scattered with rocks and bushes, many other species find here their ideal habitat. May and June are the best months to admire this explosion of colors. Some of the flowers’ species have a great scientific and naturalistic value such as Crocus imperati, Asplenium petrarchae, Gagea pratentis, Gagea villosa, Fritillaria tenella, Potetilla rigoana, Allium flavum, Epipactis persica, Lilium croceum and Lilium martagon. Among the woodlands of Oaks and hornbeams bloom the: Campanula fragilis, a rare musk the Porella platyphylla and an even rarer clover, the Trifolium strictum.

            Click on Photos to see the photografies of the Park