There are flowers and plants that can be found only in Italy and which are famous in the panorama of international botany. These are rare plants, beautiful and endemic only to some rather small areas. Of course, most of the names of these plants are unknown to those who are not botany lovers, and it is a great pity, since they are real rarities around the world and, for the most part, they are protected species. To better make them known to the general public, in 2018 the initiative has been taken to officially list them, also providing information on each one’s native regions, also highlighting their importance for the country bio-diversity.

Flowers and regions: the plants that you can only admire in Italy

Italy is a varied and complete country, for its culture, history and architecture, but also from the naturalistic point of view. With its more than 20 national parks, and countless beautiful public and private gardens,the Peninsula is one of the world’s richest biodiversity countries, home to a great variety of flowers including rare and protected species, some of which can be admired only in Italy.

But who decreed their names? What exactly are they and where can they be admired? Let’s find out together by making something of a “novelty” in the botanical field, that is a list of Italian regional flowers, sanctioned in 2018.

The plants and flowers that can be admired only in Italy: a bit more info

In 2018 over 500 botany experts from all over the world decreed what are considered the 20 regional Italian plants. The Initiative was promoted by the Italian Botanical Society (http://www.societabotanicaitaliana.it/) and coordinated by the scholar Lorenzo Peruzzi, director of the Botanical Garden and professor of biology at the University of Pisa. The Initiative was set up not only to give greater prominence to the Italian naturalistic treasures, but also and above all to promote their preservation and protection.

Italian Plants and flowers from North to South: the rarest

The plants and flowers that you can only admire in Italy are many, and most of them can be observed only within protected naturalistic areas, except some of which we will talk about shortly. Italian plants and flowers that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world are:

• Adonide Curvata, Abruzzo. Yellow-flowered herbaceous plant growing on top of the Central Apennines.

• Soldanella Calabrese, Calabria. Plant with purple small flowers growing in the central areas of the region.

• Primula appenninica, Emilia Romagna. Primrose with pink flowers of the Tosco-Emilian National Park.

• Campanula di Capo Noli, limited to the territory of Capo Noli, in Liguria.

• Sassifraga dell’Argentera, Lombardy. Pink flowering Plant of the western Alps, very rare!

• Fir from Madonie, Sicily. A conifer from Madonie.

• Zafferano etrusco, Tuscany. Early flowering herbaceous plant.

• Androsace di Hausmann, endemic to the central eastern Alps of Trentino Alto Adige.

• Astragalo maggiore, Valle d’Aosta, a spontaneous herb with yellow flowers.

• Sassifraga dei Berici, Veneto. White flowering herbaceous plant.

• Bivonea di Savi, Umbria.

• Gigaro pugliese, Puglia.

• Acero di l’Obel, Molise.

• Silene di Elisabetta, Lombardy. Fuchsia flowers, endemic of the area between Lombardy and Trentino.

• Spillone palustre, Friuli Venezia Giulia. Grows in the area of the springs.

• Pino Loricato, Basilicata.

Less rare Italian Plants and flowers: Here they are

Among the many plants and flowers that you can admire only in Italy, there are some varieties that are absent in the rest of the world but that are actually very common in the Italian territory. To observe them closely you will not necessarily have to look for them in a protected area, because it is easy to find them growing spontaneously everywhere, of course in their areas of provenance.

Primula di palinuro

Among the Italian regional plants that are most common are the Primula of Palinuro, endemic in the coasts between Campania and Calabria; A graceful primrose with yellow flowers, and the Common Storace, a huge shrub with showy white flowers that grows spontaneously between Lazio and Campania. Finally, we have the vesicular Moehringia, a seedling with small white flowers endemic throughout the territory of Marche, and the flower of the Sardinian Currant only endemic to a restricted area of Sardinia.