LIVING

An undeveloped area of rough sandy ground in Salou is home to a seashore campion, Silene ramosissima, not found anywhere else in Catalunya. Last spring, when thousands of British students descended upon the town for the notorious Saloufest, this patch of ‘wasteland’ was turned into a makeshift car park for the duration. Most of the plants, with their small, pale purple flowers, were obliterated.

Cèsar Blanché, botany professor at Barcelona University, has many more such anecdotes to tell, as one of the authors of El Llibre Vermell de les plantes vasculars endèmiques i amenaçades de Catalunya (The Red Book of Endemic and Endangered Plants in Catalunya; edited by Argania Editio). With limited funding, this attractive and informative book is the culmination of seven years of mainly voluntary work, with contributions from over a hundred experts, “a network of eyes scouring the land and pooling information”, as Blanché describes it. As plant populations can be fragmented and extremely localised, their mapping is vital to prevent accidental calamities as in Salou. El Llibre Vermell highlights 199 critically endangered species, and describes 17 as extinct. But it’s also a celebration of Catalunya’s impressive plant biodiversity and includes detailed descriptions of 127 endemic species.

If you stand on a suitable vantage point, say La Morella in the Garraf, you get an instant impression of the sheer variety of habitats in Catalunya: from the snow-capped Pyrenees on the northern horizon, with their Alpine pastures, to the sheltered coastal plains immediately below. Looming behind Barcelona is Montseny, its beech forest among the most southerly of Europe, and hidden on the other side is the green lushness of La Garrotxa, an island of rainy Atlantic climate. This environmental mosaic is responsible for the impressive total of around 3,600 plant species found in Catalunya, which, like the rest of southern Europe, escaped the worst purges of the Ice Age. Plant hotspots are the Serra de Cadí in the north and Els Ports in the south where the central Iberian System of mountains meets the Mediterranean.

The flower chosen for the front cover of El Llibre Vermell is found in Els Ports and nowhere else in the world. Aquilegia paui is a diminutive columbine, a genus of flowers also known as Granny’s Nightcaps, with purple petals reminiscent of a flouncy old-fashioned bonnet. The Catalan name, corniol (‘little horn’) refers to the long nectar spurs that curve to the back. The Corniol dels Ports has evolved to survive in rocky crevices, frequently seared by ferocious winds. The fragility of the flowers is deceptive: tough woody stems underground can be almost as thick as a tree.