The Flora in the National Park Of Cilento
THE GELBISON-CERVATI MASSIF
The Gelbison and the Centaurino mountains made up of flysch-like rocks are apparently alike in terms of vegetation. Yet the difference between the two geological areas seem to be quite clear even to those who know very little about the relationship between vegetation and kind of soil. Going up the slopes of Gelbison, just a glance at the landscape allows one to understand how different the vegetation is. Starting from below, it can be easily noticed that the bay-oak and bitter-oak woods that once used to cover the mountain slopes up to 300 to 400 hundred metres are now to be seen in small patches of a few plants at the rims of woods or at the side of man-made terraces.
These trees grow together with very thick bushes of blackthorn, that are covered with bright white flowers in Spring, along with small bitter-oak trees and manna-ash and bramble bushes. The remaining land is covered with poor vineyards, splendid olive groves, vegetable gardens, and cultivars on terraced plots of land, as the slope is too steep. The local reddish-yellow and brown stone is used to do the terracing work. Going up, the look of the forest changes, as there grow the trees that do not like calcareous soil, like the Neapolitan alder (alnus cordata), that needs wet and fresh soils, the chestnut tree (castanea saliva) that with the alder tree makes extensive woods, and the charcoal burner’s broom (sarothamnus scoparius) which is different from the more common broom (spartium junceum), that can thrive also in dryer lands.
The wood undergrowth is made up of a thick carpet of fern (pteridium aquilinum) that acquires a reddish copper colour at the end of winter and in spring, a sight that is made livelier by the light green hellebore (helleborus foetidus), by the bluish and pink stars of the anemones (anemone sp.) and by the purple pink of spring crocus flowers (crocus sp.). Higher up, at 800 -850 metres the lovely chestnut woods mix with the enchanting beech woods. In spring the chestnut leaves are a fine light green colour, that in summer becomes dark green and in autumn the leaves acquire a lovely golden colour, but the beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) all year round shows the contrast between the silver gray of its trunk and the different hues of the crown that, even when it is bare in winter, shows the lovely purple colour of its branches. In the woods one can also admire the lovely Lobel maple (acer lobelii), and a rare species that is to be found at 1700 metres and over in rocky environments.
The mountains that form an ideal semicircle between the Cervati Mount to the Alburni mountain range are mostly made up of calcareous rock, which can be found nearly everywhere in the Appennini mountain chain. The vegetation is the one that is typical of these areas. Down below, where clayish and earthy hillocks seen between higher mountains and along rivers and watersheds, the environment is a typical rural one, with subsistence farming that is typical of the inland areas of the Campania region. As in Gelbison, here too, traces of the ancient forests of oak woods bitter-oak woods (quercus cerris) appear like relics among farmed fields in rows and hedges, thickets and rims, like a sort of vegetation archive..
THE GELBISON-CERVATI MASSIF
In our opinion, one of the most peculiar aspects of the Alburni mountain range vegetation is the difference one may notice between the southern slope, that is more even and varied and the northern slope, that is steeper and more alpine. When one looks at it from the Sele , this slope perfectly shows the precise way the wood vegetation adapts itself to the geographic an geologic conditions. The dark green thick ilex wood, that covers its slope below the calcareous outcrops that mark the skyline, in winter shows brown vertical stripes originating from the crest yokes and running, more or less, down the watersheds. It easy to explain why there are two colour stripes: the reason is that the ilex, with other warm weather loving evergreens growing on less fertile and steeper rocky ridges, gives way to the more demanding Neapolitan alder in the deeper valleys where there is more humidity and more humus washed down the near slopes.
It is this plant with the brown branches of its bare crown that creates the contrast with the dark green of the ilex wood. Besides this, the Alburni mountains vegetation follows the typical patterns of the calcareous massifs in this area. In the lower belt up to 600 metres and, in the areas, where the warm Mediterranean climate is better felt, up to 800 – 1000 metres, this is the usual variegated and lovely sub-mountain copse wood:: black hornbeam with its brown shiny cork, manna-ash with its white honeyed corymbs, twisted, outstanding bay-oak trees, field maple trees. Wherever the soil is mainly rocky and there is more sunshine, the Mediterranean bush prevails with its myrtle, phillirea, lentisk, viburnum, asparagus and a lot more plants that give fragrance and lustre, among which the ilex predominates. Higher up, between 600 and 800 metres of altitude it is the turkey oak that prevails over the slopes and tablelands with large plants that keep their leaves until late spring.
At this altitude, the turkish oak shares this belt with a number of other important, though rare trees like the opal maple tree (cerrus opalus), the twisted bay oak tree, the smaller maple tree, the manna-ash, all this along with a series of more common, but not less beautiful bushes of juniper (juniperus communis), blackthorns, hawthorns, old-man’s beard, blackberry bushes and ferns. Above the woods of turkey oaks, there are chestnut woods that cover over 15% of the whole wooded area. The beech wood, that can be found in almost the whole Appennini mountain range at altitudes of 1000 metres and over, covers vast areas also in this mountain chain with 48% of the whole wooded area. The features of the vegetation here are not different from the one described for the other areas. What we have more here are the fir-trees in the Corleto Monforte area and the yew trees (taxus baccata) that creates dark green and shady patches here and there in the forest of beech wood.
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