In the first public lecture and discussion within the 16th International Wild Flower Festival, Žiga Zwitter, PhD, and Tadej Pavković, both historians at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, presented a time when farmers created and maintained, in the long term, most meadows in the south-eastern Alps.
The species composition of meadows was then characterised by mowing, spring pruning, fertilising, irrigation in certain places, spring grazing on meadows (until it was abandoned in the second half of the 19th century) and, in the case of enclosed meadows, use as arable land.
In addition, the lecture presented the basic herbs that different meadow management practices promoted or suppressed, as there were numerous plant and animal species in all meadows in the period in question.
When we buy milk and dairy products today, we do not pay enough attention to what kind of meadows we support and co-create ourselves: those that remain species-rich or those where intensive exploitation in recent decades has caused most of the plant and animal species to die out.
Coordinators: Žiga Zwitter, PhD, and Tadej Pavković, Faculty of Arts
