Flora
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THE PARCO DELLA MURGIA MATERANA
Flora
The vegetation of Murgia is characterized by plants adapted to 'very poor environment of water and exposed to strong and frequent winds accentuate the dryness of the climate.
In the areas immediately surrounding the Visitor Center Jazz Kitten is particularly developed the typical vegetation of the Mediterranean pseudosteppa: represented by pastures, rock, with a predominance of herbaceous vegetation in the thin layer of soil that fills cracks and hollows of the rock. In spring, for a few weeks, the plateau appears as an expanse of green dotted with white, yellow and red for the flowering of daffodils, ferule, thistles, poppies, cysts and various types of orchids.
For a few days taking some slopes cerulean hue for the wonderful flowering of the rare Lino Tommasini. From May onwards enters the flowering Lino fairy that transforms into a wavy sea grass silver.
With the arrival of summer temperatures the dominant color becomes yellow-brown grass and dry season begins more difficult for the flora of the Murgia. But evolution has selected the plants that inhabit this environment that they need very little water and have developed several strategies for storing,organic development of reserves in the roots, in bulbs, in stems and leaves.
In some areas, between the vegetation of low bushes and you see pseudosteppa rounded fighting, Thanks to this form, against the wind and the heat: is the typical environment of the scrubland. Plant characteristics are: il thymus bush (much more widespread in the past but which still flourishes in a copious), the santoreggia, the mint, the grape of Puglia,route, some Euphorbia and certain to. Especially those species that are, if trampled, spread that characteristic smell, often given by the merger of the odors of individual plants, remaining in the olfactory memory is of those who attended the Murgia and attended as a child and is the visitor for the first time has the good fortune to wander around here.
Where shrubs are able to colonize more sides and to carry forward that process of evolution of the vegetation upon completion leads to the formation of a forest, today we can see the Mediterranean, consists primarily of shrubs mastic,terebinto, alaterno, fillirea, hawthorn, olive, etc.. Along the perimeter of the field of farm Radogna you can see some examples of fragno, a beautiful oak tree that dominated what was,before the devastating fire last decade, the wood of Lucignano (not included in the map). The fragno is highly popular in the Balkans and in Italy it is present only in the Apulian Murgia, and then the stations of the Murgia of Matera represent the western limit of this species. Walking through the visitor center and the square of the lookout you can see also: ilex, The wild pear, Oak Virgil, the wild fig, l’orniello, the maple, almond.
But the more exclusive atmosphere of Murgia is the rock vegetation, characterized by plants that have been taken with the evolution of a set of adaptations that allow them to colonize the rocky walls,where the bad weather is also the difficulty to draw nourishment from a very low (sometimes non-existent) layer of loose soil.
So some of these amazing plants have roots that produce lytic enzymes that allow you to enter more deeply into the rock and expel excess calcium carbonate. Typical plants are rock: caper, the Apulian bell, the navel of Venus.
To complete the observations of vegetation areas in the Park will need to get off the bottom of the ravine where the environmental conditions change completely and unexpectedly with the presence of perennial water current that enables the attachment of a hydric riparian vegetation completely atypical for the area murgica. Here you can see willow, poplars, olmo, ash, tamarisk, reed, Tifa, etc.. A land so, to Timone, that despite the intense human activity keeps, still, evidence of a very precious and rare flora. It consists of twenty endemic species (Chamomile Otranto, Fiordaliso Gargano, Vedovino Basilicata, Timo spinosetto), from rare species and in some cases to species at risk of extinction.
