The Miracle of the Kopetdag Spring
High in the mountains, where spring comes late, the magical time, hidden from human eyes, continues and fascinates with the swiftness of the change in the variety of flowering herbaceous plants. This most wonderful period absorbed precious moments of vegetation of rare and endemic plants into short three or four weeks. The flowering parade of botanical rarities of the Kopetdag Mountains will flash by like a fast flowing mountain stream. First flowers – the heralds of spring – begin to open their petals on the hills of the foothills long before the onset of calendar spring, as if according to schedule, despite the ups and downs of the weather, sometimes they peep out from under the non-melted snow, therefore they are popularly called snowdrops. They symbolise the start of a new round of the annual cycle of nature and therefore deserve careful and caring attitude. It is the Merendera robusta that appears first: its flowers, pressed to the wet ground, look like large snowflakes or drops of milk and exude a subtle delicate aroma. In early spring, in the upper horizon of the mountains on the steep cliffs of the peaks, a rare plant awakens to life – a dense green “cushion” of the Dionysia tapetodes with a height of up to 20 cm. This is an amazing miracle of nature living on stones. Shortened shoots of the plant with inflorescences were laid already in the autumn, their
