The road winds above Lake Skadar with panoramas of lake and forest around each hairpin; through the village of Kruševica where beekeepers tend the hives and signs hang above tables of laden with tall bottles; on through pretty Komarno, and, at the end of a steep slope with lake below, a new road descending the steep valley to the old…
Tag: Plants
Evening’s End on Velika Plaza
Velika Plaza on this bright evening is huge, wild and exhilarating with a strong onshore wind, warm and welcome after a hot day; it is also cluttered with ramshackle summer cabins and endless, ugly litter, much probably brought up during winter storms but much also discarded by visitors. This evening the great beach is almost empty of people…
Ostrog White, Durmitor Dark, Biogradska Gora Light
The fast road from Podgorica to the large town of Nikšić runs up the south side of the Zeta valley and gives a distant view of the Ostrog monastery, white against the high, dark cliff. The monastery is a principal place of pilgrimage within the Serbian Orthodox Church and also much visited by tourists. A smooth road from…
Rumija’s Romans
April 20th is another brilliant day and Lake Skader ice flat, blue gin under blue sky. The villages and hamlets are alive with sprouting vines and emerging vegetables; an old woman bends over hoeing carefully along the rows. The surrounding wooded slopes are bright green swathes of hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) spattered with vanilla ice creams of flowering manna ash (Fraxinus ornus)….
Buljarica in Bloom
Buljarica was hot and humid under high sheets of cloud sliding slowly in from the Adriatic. The small meadows on the narrow coastal plain behind the huge reed bed have no gate just a piece of cord slung across the entrance and are now high with grasses, bright yellow brassicas and pale blue flax. The warm weather of the…
The Road to Čukovići
The old chalk quarry just outside of Virpazar on the road to Rijeka Crnojevića is a sheltered sun trap. Rank grassland and shrubs have not developed, perhaps because of the shallow soils and regular grazing by goats from the nearby smallholding. Hence it is floristically diverse and this, in turn, supports a range of butterflies. A…
Lake Skadar’s Resurrection Plant
Today I found Ramonda serbica on a sheltered, small, north-facing cliff face on the south side of Lake Skadar along the winding road from Virpazar to Ostros. This plant is endemic to the southern Balkans and known as one of the few so called ‘resurrection plants’. This is the ability to dry out to a brown crisp during…
Plavnica Water Meadows
The road from Golubovci runs arrow straight for six kilometres, so the sign says, to the isolated riverside resort of Plavnica through a flat landscape of small farms. Each holding and their house is different but nearly all are growing vegetables in neat plots, with cabbage and lettuce being most prominent. These are planted out by hand with a long…
The Road to Gluhi Do
Just to the south of Virpazar, the twisting road to Gluhi Do runs alongside a stream, wet pastures and woodlands and then across the edge of a large expanse of abandoned, thorn-covered farmland. There is distant traffic noise from the fast road to the Sozina Tunnel on the slope above, as well as occasional trains from the nearby line…
Biogradska Gora – Spring Melt
The path up to the lake on 11th April was, in contrast to my last visit, almost clear of snow. Plants were up in the leaf litter under the high forest. White butterbur (Petasites albus) was most numerous but the vivid blue hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) was more eye-catching. Wood anemone (Anemone nemerosa) and a borage species were…
Ascent of Rumija
Yesterday, we set out to climb Rumija mountain, well a goodly part of its 1,595m. The mountain tops were still snow-covered but the target was to reach the steep beech forests at around 1,200m. We began in the ancient sweet chestnut woods and followed the way-marked path, passing through the hamlet of Gornji Briska. The…
Seoce
We walked from the outskirts of Godinje up the long hill to the old village of Seoce. The weather brightened and the east wind was blocked by the hills for most of the way. Blackcaps were as numerous and busy as ever in the roadside trees. There were many Fritillaria messanensis and these were most abundant in…