For Wordless Wednesday I gave you a taste of the wild flowers we saw last weekend when we visited the Monti Sibillini National Park. The National Park was formed in 1993 and the area is host to wolves and other animals that are disappearing from the wild across Europe. The Park spans the two regions of Umbria and Marche.
I was hoping to identify many of the orchids for you but it has proved extremely difficult despite using 3 books and the resources of the internet to help me. So I think the best thing is to just let you see the slide show and later in summer when it is too hot to be outside I will devote some time to identifying them and perhaps write small posts about the most interesting features.
It was cold, unbelievably cold so many flowers that finished here months ago were still flowering; Muscari, Narcissus, Asphodel, were joined by Salvia, Pulmonaria, and hundreds of orchids including many different species – various bee orchids, Man orchids, naked man, Lady, Pyramid and numerous others, oh and Gentians, I’d never seen gentians growing in the wild before, they are amazing. If you do manage to ID any I would be very happy to hear from you.
Grab a coffee or better still a glass of Umbrian wine Click here to link to the slideshow there are about 150 images – enjoy!
Creating my own garden of the Hesperides 
So many beautiful flowers, and what a spectacular landscape
Quite a nice variety. Sorry I can’t help with the IDs but enjoyed perusing the images.
Wonderful! There were so many flowers (and insects) I can’t say I’ve ever seen before. It’s impressive to see so much land in a natural state. We have very few wildflower fields left in Southern California – houses go up wherever there is vacant land and a road.
But there is a lot of winderness in the States, you have such a big country that some of your National Parks are as big as a small European country, we saw lots of native flowers when we travelled between the Grand Canyon and Zion and then on through Death Valley.
That was so lovely Christina! I sat back with a coffee (bit early for wine!) and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Wouldn’t it be great to do a tour like that with a botanist in tow… 😉 Lots of familiar and very many unfamiliar flowers. I hope you will manage to identify some and do a post in the summer. Thanks!
When it is too hot outside it will be fun to remember how cold I was!
Spectacular! No Umbrian wine in our house but I enjoyed the show with Elderflower cordial 🙂
Just as nice!
Beautiful!
Beautiful! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different wildflowers in one meadow!
A few of the images on your wonderful tour are familiar but I am not able to put a name to any with certainty. Why was it so cold? No wine but a lovely Ginger tea accompanied me.
It was so cold because we were so high, 10 of the mountains in the National Park are 6,560 feet (2,000 meters), we were certainly above 1000 metres; in someimages you can see the snow still on the tops of the mountians.
How lovely, Christina – and intriguing to see plants we are more used to seeing in gardens. What a great experience for for you 🙂
Yes, it was and interesting that early spring flowers and summer flowers were all flowering together because it was so high with the snow still on the tops of the mountains as you could just see in some of the images.
Christina, this National Park is breathtaking. I wonder if all of these wildflowers occur naturally, or were many of them planted? From the scope of the territory, I can’t imagine that they were planted by man, but their beauty is as lovely as many modern hybrids!
I’m sure they were all naturally occuring flowers unlike the ones I posted about last July at Casteluccio.
Bellissime foto Christina… invidio la vostra passeggiata 🙂
é stato bellissimo, c’era anche un ristorante dove abbiamo mangiato molto bene, Il Tiglio, dovesti provarlo!
Lovely – where in the park were you hiking? Thinking of going there myself next week.
Thanks –
We were near Montemonaco. We stayed and ate at Il Tiglio (wonderful restaurant, basic appartment). We walked off the road between Montemonaco and Il Tiglio and on Sunday closer to Casteluccio but not in the lentil fields but the mountain.
Wow! Fantastic wild flowers Christina. There’s a lot of diversity there.
I have never seen so many different wild flowers anywhere, I just kept stopping and saying ” oh my God this is sooooooo beautiful!”
And what stunning wildflowers