Flora

The Apuan Alps Botanical Garden "P. Pellegrini"

 

hightlighted entities

Descriptive cards
of some important plants
(in italian)
 

Aquilegia bertolonii

Biscutella apuana

Campanula medium

Carex macrolepis

Carex macrostachys

Carum appuanum

Centaurea arachnoidea

Centaurea arrigoni

Cerastium apuanum

Globularia incanescens

Hypericum coris

Lomelosia graminifolia

Moltkia suffruticosa

Orchis pauciflora

Phyteuma scorzonerifolia

Polygala carueliana

Rhamnus glaucophylla

Rhinanthus apuanus

Salix crataegifolia

Santolina leucantha

Saxifraga lingulata

Scabiosa holosericea

Sesleria tenuifolia

Valeriana saxatilis

Veronica aphylla
 

The Park's Herbarium

The botanic garden was created in 1966 to safeguard and give value to the Apuan Alps. It is dedicated to Pietro Pellegrini, a doctor and botanist who was born in Carrara in 1867. He spent most of his life studying the Apuan flora, and died in Massa in 1957.
The Botanic Garden belongs to the Municipality of Massa and is managed together with Tuscan Universities.
Inside the Botanic Garden it’s possible to see some Apuan flora species.
In fact, a lot of endemic and relict species grow spontaneously in this area.
They started to arouse the interest of botanists at the beginning of the last century.

The Botanic Garden covers an area of more or less 3 hectares. It is located on a rocky peak made of two kinds of rock: porphyritic schists(Permian-Palaeozoic), mainly siliceous, and the so-called “grezzoni”, which are rocks made of dolomite (Triassic-Mesozoic), a calcium and magnesium carbonate. In the lowest area, made of porphyritic schists, there are numerous acidophil plants that on the Apuan Alps usually grow in chestnut woods (Castanea sativa), Among these: Sageleaf rockrose (Cistus salvifolius), Tree heath (Erica arborea), and others (Teucrium scorodonia, Digitalis lutea, Phyteuma orbiculare).

Most of the Botanic Garden is made of dolomite. There are European Hop Hornbeams (Ostrya carpinifolia), Turkey Oaks (Quercus cerris), Manna Ashes (Fraxinus ornus) and White Beams (Sorbus aria). In the big plains there are shrubs such as the Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum lantana), Snowy Mespilus (Amelanchier ovalis) and Scorpion Senna (Coronilla emerus). On the calcareous rocks and in the plains there are some endemic species. Many of them exist only on the Apuan Alps (Salix crataegifolia, Santolina leucantha, Polygala carueliana), other plants exist both on the Apuan Alps and Lucca Apennine (Thesium sommieri, Buphthalmum salicifolium subsp. flexile, Carex macrostachys, Moltkia suffruticosa, Rhamnus glaucophyllus, Globularia incanescens, Leontodon anomalus); while some others can be found on most of the Apennine chain (Scabiosa holosericea, Centaurea ambigua subsp. ambigua, Orchis paucifl ora) and on the Mediterranean basin mountains (Astragalus purpureus subsp. gremlii, Hypericum coris, Helianthemum oelandicum subsp. italicum).

In a very little area of the Botanic Garden it is possible to find the  Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), which represents a kind of vegetation that lives on the highest siliceous mountains of the Apuan Alps.
Inside the Botanic Garden there is a little lake that was created with the aim of housing some vegetable species that live in the few high moist areas of the Apuan Alps (Alchemilla xanthochlora, Dactylorhiza maculata, Eleocharis palustris, Eriophorum latifolium, Galium palustre, Mentha aquatica, Myosotis sp. pl., Veratrum album subsp. lobelianum).