Wildflowers for spring

After writing about the first day of spring in Perugia, and after recent rains, Italy should be back on track for its spring.
At least I hope, because I’m planning some mountain frolics to check out the wildflowers.
Coming from a country where the wildflowers are strange and hard to spot, I was bedazzled by the delicate beauty of the mountain varieties in Italy.

With many species now protected in Italy, you can enjoy the coloured carpets that often spring up in the mountains.
The most famous is perhaps the “stella alpina” (alpine star), known to us as the edelweiss.
Other species include the gentian, crocus lily, peony, and primula.

The concept of protecting the flowers of Italy’s mountains was purely for aesthetic reasons: to stave off the possibility that one day we would be staring at plain hillsides and not the current moutains graced with their floral ornaments.
Picking flowers is therefore obviously forbidden, but I’m not sure the rule also applies to the wild strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that you find – and there’s nothing like a burst of sweet strawberry juice on the tongue to know spring has arrived.