Yesterday we had a beautiful hike in the wilderness of Putna-Vrancea Natural Park, surrounded by the bird’s songs and the cool breeze in the air, letting us know that autumn is slowly coming.
Putna-Vrancea Natural Park is one of the most well preserved areas in Romania, a protected area of around 30.000 hectares where human access is limited in the area and you can spot a large variety of flora and fauna, including wolves, bears, lynx, chamoix, wild cats, wild boars and deer.
Because it has rained the day before, we were lucky enough to find a lot of edible mushrooms: Ramaria flava, is a yellow edible coral mushroom, Macrolepiota procera, with a large, prominent fruiting body resembling a parasol and the famous Penny Bun (Boletus edulis).
Also, my favourite (but not edible) mushrooms are for sure, Mycena haematopus, commonly known as the bleeding fairy helmet. They are characterized by their reddish color, the scalloped cap edges, and the dark red latex they “bleed” when cut or broken. Both the fruit bodies and the mycelia are weakly bioluminescent.
We have also seen the Atropa belladonna, commonly known as belladonna or deadly nightshade, which is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant, Campanula napuligera is a herbaceous perennial native to the Pyrenees, Alps, and Carpathians and many, many more :).
As a final note, we were really impressed by the project Life Rosalia that is happening right now in the park. The main objective is to increase the understanding of the role of saproxylic beetles’ communities and associated habitats for biodiversity and forest resilience. The project aims at halting and reversing the loss of priority and non-priority saproxylic beetles’ populations in the Carpathians by demonstrating conservation actions for increasing the connectivity of favorable habitats and transferring and replicating suitable actions in other Romanian Natura 2000 sites.
