As I mentioned previously, I wasn’t a great fan of trudging along, especially up, wide stone 4×4 tracks in the mountains but it give Francine some good views of the flora and gave her time to pause without getting lost – the group would still be in sight.
Actually, we were really lucky having flowers to look at; our leader, Mick, told us that they’d normally be over at this time of year but some heavy and persistent rain two weeks earlier had prolonged the flowering season.
Going into a lot of wordy detail is probably not a great idea and, where I’m concerned being a non-botanist, probably not possible. I will highlight one, though. Back up in Jalon, before we came down to Andalucia, on one of our “training” walks Francine had seen a Spanish Rusty Foxglove (Digitalis obscura). She’d meant to return to photograph it but didn’t quite make it. Fortunately, we came across another little outcrop of them on one of our walks here so she got it in the end.
A few other plants made an impression, including a particularly attractive Bugloss (like Viper’s Bugloss – Echium sp), many utterly delightful Spanish Irises (Iris xiphium), a Toadflax that Francine thinks is Linaria aeruginea and some large yellow thistles that are a little more elusive but a Carthamus sp.
To give a feel for the overall views of the countryside floral environment, here’s a few general shots to feast your eyes on.
It was all quite delightful and we were very lucky to see a display that really should’ve been over by the time we were there. We’re very glad it wasn’t.
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