Natura 2000 - Beskydy
FORESTLESS AREAS
Meadows and pastures
Meadows and pastures formed secondarily; they were created by people. Only 500 years ago, a deep forest stood in places where farmers mow meadows and pasture sheep today. When people stop farming, self-seeding tall herbs and woody species begin to grow over meadows and pastures, gradually enclosing them into a forest again. The circle closes. However, a great abundance of plants can be found in meadows and pastures.
Wildflower meadows
Wildflower meadows are maintained by regular mowing, sometimes with additional pasturing. Plentiful grasses grow on the colourful meadows; Tall Oat-grass in lower locations, Red Fescue in higher ones; strikingly flowering species are abundant – oxeye daisies, spreading bellflowers, goatsbeards, Field Scabious and others. Occasionally, we can see flowering Common Columbine, gladioli (Gladiolus imbricatus) and some of the Beskids’s orchids – Early Purple Orchid, Elder-flowered Orchid, Fragrant Orchid, Traunsteinera …
