Marshes and swamps are words that sound unpleasant, almost ominous to the human ear, but to these life spaces we are doing a great injustice, as marshes and swamps, together with other wetlands, are the real cradle of life on our planet. Wetlands, where we group all living spaces, where water and land meet and interweave, are certainly the most important living spaces on Earth, at least as far as the benefits of living beings go ... wetlands, including bogs and swamps, indeed function as the world's largest purification plant!
Water flows into them and through them, water that is cleaned by them and from which countless organisms live, from microscopically small bacteria, protozoa and algae, through tiny invertebrates to colorful fish, loud birds and amphibians to timid reptiles, majestic mammals and plants of all kinds.
Among marshes and swamps we count, depending on the characteristic vegetation that grows there, different types of swamps and bogs, including headwater areas and marginal wetlands with aquatic plants. We also include plant communities of standing inland waters, wet and marshy grasslands and tall reed beds, as well as groves and swamp forests.
Reed beds and similar associations
These are plant stands formed by marsh monocotyledons, for example common reed (Phragmites australis), reed canary-grass (Phalaris arundinacea), cattails (Typha), bur-reeds (Sparganium), bulrushes (Schoenoplectus) or horsetails (Equisetum). For these plant communities it is characteristic that usually a single plant species predominates, and on this the further classification of these associations is based.
Common reed beds
These are more or less dense and extensive stands of common reed (Phragmites australis) on the shores of standing inland waters and on sea coasts, along flowing waters and in nutrient-rich wetlands.
Although plant diversity in reed beds is very small, reed beds are the living space of various animals. Most hide from the eye in the water, among submerged parts of the stems; some, such as the reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) or the bittern (Botaurus stellaris), find shelter in the impenetrable mass of stems above the water surface.
Low bogs, transitional bogs and springs
We will recognise low bogs by associations of low sedges and other plants from the sedge family. Here plants, adapted to more or less permanently wet or waterlogged barren soils, thrive.
Calcareous low bogs
Calcareous low bogs are characterized by being wetted by water, rich in dissolved carbonates, but poor in nutrients. The groundwater can lie just below the surface in these areas, and in some places even on it. Also peat forms on low bogs, forming under water, but it does not form from peat moss, as is typical for raised bogs.
For these habitats, the characteristic species are those of low bogs that typically thrive together with species of oligotrophic wet meadows, which diversify the plant cover.
On parts of Lake Cerknica, the conditions are favorable for the development of calcareous low bogs, hence extensive areas of these habitats can be found there. In some areas, black sedge (Schoenus nigricans) may predominate, in others brown bog-rush (Schoenus ferrugineus), hence we speak of low bogs with blackish sedge or low bogs with brown sedge; most often both sedge species thrive together on the low bog.
They may be joined by Carex panicea (carnation sedge) and Davall's sedge (C. davalliana), broad-leaved cotton-grass (Eriophorum latifolium) and common cotton-grass (E. angustifolium), alpine bulrush (Trichophorum alpinum), purple moor-grass (Molinia caerulea), early marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata), marsh helleborine (Epipactis palustris), marsh grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia palustris) and perhaps a few more.
