As the name already indicates, grasslands are plant communities, or more generally habitat types, in which species from the grass family (f. Poaceae) predominate. They form a turf, where characteristic herbaceous perennials and annuals thrive, as well as some, especially shrubs and woody species, depending on environmental factors.
As individual plant species are adapted to grow on a specific site, we know different types of grasslands. The plants are adapted to the type of rocky substrate, soil moisture, its acidity or basicity and its nitrogen content, to the amount of rainfall and the ambient temperature and similar factors. With these environmental factors, the plants shape habitats for most animal species, provide them with food and are therefore indispensable to them.
Grasslands today cover extensive areas on parts of the Earth that are either too dry or too cold for the forest to thrive. However, because grasses have a growth form adapted to grazing and, of course, mowing, humans have, also in Slovenia, spread them to areas where the natural vegetation is dominated by forest through deforestation and grazing. Here, they must be maintained by regular mowing or with the help of grazing animals, so that they do not become overgrown with woody species...
Of course the abandonment of grazing and mowing in these parts of the world means a gradual, but unstoppable, transformation of grasslands into forest. Succession, as we call this gradual change of plant communities in a given area, is of course a completely natural process. However, with the disappearance of plant species that form grasslands, the animal species adapted to and tied to these habitats also disappear … in this way we lose biodiversity, that is, the diversity of forms, colors, ways of life and everything else that Nature has adapted and refined over hundreds of thousands of years!
Oligotrophic wet meadows with purple moor-grass and related communities
This habitat type is represented by moist grasslands on poorer soils in areas with fluctuating groundwater levels. These areas can be flooded in spring, then completely dry up over the summer. An important condition for the development of this type of grassland on such soils is that these areas are not fertilized! It is also important not to forget the regular late-summer mowing, which we perform once a year.
In the area of Lake Cerknica, oligotrophic wet meadows with purple moor-grass occur right at the edge of the floodplain. Surface water in these parts is mostly absent, as only very high waters flood them; the moisture of the substrate here remains high enough to enable this type of vegetation.
Typical plant species that we will encounter on a walk through such a meadow at Lake Cerknica are: purple moor-grass (Molinia caerulea), tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia cespitosa), wild gladiolus (Gladiolus illyricus), mouse garlic (Allium angulosum), Allium suaveolens, betony (Betonica officinalis), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale), devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis), marsh gentian (Gentiana pneumonanthe), narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago altissima), common tormentil (Potentilla erecta), dyer's plumeless saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria), carnation sedge (Carex panicea), purple-loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris), brownray knapweed (Centaurea jacea), on some parts also Peucedanum coriaceum and more.
These meadows are not among the richest in species, but some of the plants that live here are rarer and endangered due to their sensitivity to moist, unfertilized soil! The charm of these meadows is further enhanced by the orchids. Of these, the following live here: Orchis palustris, marsh orchid (Epipactis palustris), early marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata), broad-leaved marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza majalis) and the fragrant orchid (Gymnadenia conopsea).
Oligotrophic wet meadows with purple moor-grass are the habitat of endangered species of plants and animals, as they are sensitive habitats that are most threatened by humans, with the abandonment of sustainable use on the one hand and the introduction of intensive land use with fertilization and more intensive mowing on the other.
The maintenance and existence of these grasslands requires a lot of effort and will, but this also enables the survival of other living creatures. Among them is the corncrake (Crex crex), a typical bird of these grasslands. That is why, for the appropriate cultivation of these grasslands, which lie in Natura 2000 areas in Slovenia, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food offers inclusion in the Agri-Environmental Payments program, now Agri-Environmental Climate Payments.
Shrublands
Shrublands are a habitat at the transition between meadow and forest, the so-called development phase. They are created by the overgrowth of grasslands. Some shrublands never reach the development phase of a forest due to natural disturbances (e.g. fires, landslides). With the abandonment of agricultural land, the area of shrublands in Slovenia is increasing. A large number of animal and plant species are linked precisely to this transition between meadow and forest.
