Home > Custom Tours > Wild flowers along the Bloščica stream
Our hike starts in a lovely village on the Bloke plateau in Slovenia. From here, we walk along meadows and through forests until we reach the stream Bloščica, which is the main destination of our three-hour nature excursion. Along the way, we can see many wildflowers, butterflies and dragonflies. Sometimes, we can see the footprints of mammals: deer, fox and bear are common in the area. Along Bloščica, we may find the tracks of otters who hunt for native crayfish!
The stream Bloščica is one of the best preserved, naturally meandering streams in Slovenia and also in the whole of Central Europe! What makes it especially interesting, is that it flows on a plateau at 750 meter a.s.l.. Because of this altitude, the weather is clearly colder than in the lowland. Here, spring starts several weeks later and even in summer, the nights are often chilly. However, this also means that summer temperatures are rarely very hot and it is an ideal place for a summertime hike! During our three-hour guided walk, we go in search of the special plants which grow along Bloščica, including wild orchids and miniature carnivorous plants.
The stream Bloščica slowly meanders through bog-meadows, which are full of flowers in springtime. These meadows are extensively used: they are mown only once or twice a year and hardly ever fertilized. In such places, the most special plants grow, which include wild orchids. Late spring is when most of them are flowering and we can see the tiny burnt orchid, the all green twayblade and the rare milk-white Transylvanian orchid. A bit later in the year, marsh helleborine’s flower and if we search well, we can find individual marsh helleborine with very pale (albinistic) flowers between the normal ones. At some places, we encounter a plant which looks similar to orchids, and which is equally rare: marsh lousewort. This is one of several plants which parasitize on the roots of other plant species, and which can only survive in unfertilized bogs.
In summer many meadows along Bloščica turn red with the small flowers of great burnet. This is the plant on which a special butterfly lays her eggs: the large scarce blue. Their caterpillars start to feed on the burnet flowers at first but soon drop to the ground. Here, they are picked up by ants of a special species. These ants like the caterpillars, because the caterpillars secrete a sugary fluid. For this, the anty carry the caterpillars to their nest, where they continue to care for them. Here, the caterpillars eat ant eggs and larvae, which the anty may never even notice. Well protected in the ants’ nest, the caterpillars develop. In the next springtime, a new generation of large scarce blue butterflies appears from the ants’ nest.
