Spring wildflowers of the Pyrenees--Part I

A weekend ramble through mountain meadows in search of botanical treasure.

05/30/2005
Spring wildflowers of the Pyrenees--Part I
Perhaps it's because I was imprinted with the mountains of Switzerland at age three that I always feel so happy on steeply sloping ground. And so I was giddy with excitement to be in the Pyrenees early last month, albeit only for a long weekend. This beautiful mountain range sprawls across the frontier of France and Spain, and is home to some of France's most pristine scenery. The only other time I'd been remotely in the same region, we'd only taken a brief drive into the foothills on the Atlantic side of the mountains, in the pays Basque of southwestern France. Then, in March, the weather had unfortunately been horrible. Now, in early May, I was looking forward to sunnier weather and some superb botanizing.

But when we arrived in Gavarnie, a montane town only about 10 kilometers from the Spanish border, there was an icy wind blowing and the sky threatened rain...or worse. The first thing I had to do was buy gloves to keep my hands from freezing. But that didn't stop Denis and me from going on our planned hike toward the Gavarnie cirque--a steep, semi-circular valley that had been carved out by the head of a glacier. We had scarcely gone 50 meters before I spotted numerous clumps of green hellebore (Helleborus viridis) on a sloping woodland edge (photo right)

The meadows around us were blanketed in wild narcissus(Narcissus pseudonarcissus spp. major, photo left). Their delicate form and pale sulfur yellow reminded me of all the reasons why I prefer wild flowers to their overblown garden forms. The difference between this gracile beauty and a 'King Alfred' garden daffodil was as striking as that between a lissome girl of 17 and a 40-year-old strumpet in heavy makeup.

Of course, one of the thrills of botanizing is seeing new plants, and in this respect I was not disappointed. A pasture to the right of our path was carpeted with a plant I'd never seen before, but which I recognized instantly as being a corydalis of some sort. It had gray-green, finely-divided foliage and short spikes of bluish-pink blossoms reminiscent of bleeding heart. One of my many wildflower manuels revealed it to be Corydalis solida (photo right).

The owner of our hotel had given us instructions on how to find an abandoned alpine garden on our way toward the cirque. Gleams of color, reminiscent of a jewel box open to some fleeting sunbeams, announced that we had found it. Some starry chips of sapphire nestled among boulders and moss abutting our path turned out to be the first spring gentians (Gentiana verna), diminuitive plants only only a couple of inches tall. As gentians rank right up there with lady's slipper orchids as among the choicest wildflowers, I was thrilled to see them. I lingered with my camera poised just a few inches above their corollas, drinking in their impossibly beautiful blue color. Most of them were just beginning to open, and I had to tease their corollas open with a gentle fingertip to get them to pose for their picture.

A glance farther up the slope revealed clumps of bright mauve-pink. I scampered up with all the excitement of a goat to get a closer look. It was Primula villosa (right) that had caught my eye. Growing directly out of a crevice in a boulder, this fragile little plant somehow found nourishment by thrusting its roots seemingly into bare rock. It took me a while to identify this plant, as I was thrown off by its fleshy leaves--so unlike those of the more common primroses. This succulent foliage of course is the plant's adaptation to its harsh, dry environmental niche.

As we continued climbing, we found ourselves in a subalpine meadow, webbed with a network of rivulets and brooks that gathered into streams which fed the torrent below--the gave de Gavarnie (a gave is a mountain stream). The clouds had parted and brilliant alpine sunlight was streaming down, highlighting clumps of golden flowers. Along a tiny rivulet draining down a steep slope, I was delighted to find clumps of marsh marigold (Caltha palustris, photo left), a circumboreal wildflower that is native to both North America and Europe. Seeing this plant that I knew from Indiana woodlands was like running into an old friend halfway around the globe.

In order to find the abandoned alpine garden, we had strayed from the main path up to the cirque. Although we could see its steep slope looming ahead of us, we couldn't seem to find the path to access it. Trying to find our way, we traversed a riverine woods, where under the pines I spotted two species of daphne! I knew daphne only as a highly desirable but notoriously difficult-to-grow garden shrub. And here it was--February daphne Daphne mezereum (photo right)--insouciantly growing wild, exactly as it was intended to grow, in lightly shaded, supremely well-drained, acid soil. I got down on my knees to inhale its delicious perfume, burying my nose in its rosy purple flowers like a delirious bee.

Finding plants I'd only known as rare garden specimens growing wild in Europe has been one of the big thrills of living here. Now, as if finding February daphne in the wild wasn't enough, right nearby, I found another daphne species that I didn't know. With leathery, obviously evergreen foliage, and small, pale yellow, waxy fragrant flowers, this I later identified in my reference books as laurel daphne (Daphne laureola, photo left). In this alpine river valley, these glamorous plants were simply common understory shrubs.

We got good and lost after the daphnes. We could see the cirque looming at the end of the valley. But in finding the abandoned alpine garden, we had forsaken the main path toward the cirque. In trying to rejoin it, we found ourselves trapped among a labyrinth of streams. At one point, we found the path, with hikers cheerily marching along it, but a swift-flowing, icy river separated us from it. Finally we had to double back considerably to a bridge before being able to hike onwards to the magnificent cirque. On the way back, with the sky once more covered with leaden clouds, and the icy wind returning and chilling me in my sweaty clothes, we traversed a forest where some more botanical treasures awaited. A lone sunbeam picked out the clump of lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis, photo above right), growing among some mossy boulders. And, to top off the hike, an expansive drift of sky blue beneath the trees--Scilla liliohyacinthoides (photo left) made the final addition to my digital plant collection.

By the time we got back to civilization, we were feeling our tired muscles--and empty stomachs! We ate an early dinner of Noir de Bigorre pork, from an ancient local breed of pigs, served with creamy Tarbais beans, in front of a roaring fire. Sleepy with red wine, we fell into bed, I to dream of the next day's botanical adventures.

Upcoming: To read about the splendid gentian at the top of the article, stay tuned for Part II.

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Products of Interest:
Bean, shell 'Tarbais'
Shade-tolerant--Long-stemmed primrose
Shade-tolerant--Longleaf lungwort
French wildflower seed mix--'Fleurs des Champs'

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