Plants

The Oberallgäu with the Alpine foothills, the Allgäu High Alps and the Nagelfluhkette Nature Park is considered an area with high biodiversity in the Alpine region.
Due to the geological diversity as well as the type of management, especially through extensive alpine farming, many new, very species-rich habitats have emerged over the centuries.

We would like to show you a selection here, which we constantly update. Be curious, we will present you more fascinating plants and animal species in the Oberallgäu at regular intervals..

Alpine Rose

Ciliated alpine rose (Rhododendron hirsutum)

  • Heather family (Ericaceae)
  • Blooms from June to August
  • Appearance: evergreen, ciliate, stalked, alternate, elliptic-ovate, finely notched-serrate, pink-red, 30 - 100 cm long; dwarf shrub
  • Habitat: 1,500 - 2,600 m, prefers calcareous krummholz scrub and dwarf shrub heaths, also calcareous rubble, scree and stony slopes.
  • protected

Arnica

(Arnica montana)

  • Compositae (Asteraceae), blooms from June to August
  • Appearance: opposite, lanceolate, with entire margin, hairy, yellow, 20 - 60 cm long
  • Habitat:  800 - 2,500 m; prefers limestone and marl soils, lean mountain meadows, acidic clay and bog meadows, dwarf shrub heaths
  • Medicinal plant
  • Protected

Alpen-Edelweiß

(Leontopodium alpinium)

  • Compositae (Asteraceae)
  • Blooms from July to September
  • Appearance: rosette, lenticular, underside strongly hairy woolly, white-felted
  • Size: 5 – 20 cm
  • Habitat: prefers limestone cliffs at 1,800 - 3,200 m, on stone corridors
  • Strongly protected, rare

Stemless silicate gentian

(Gentiana acaulis, Gentiana kochiana)

  • 3-5 cm long, narrow bell-shaped flowers at 1-3 in the leaf axils
  • Flowers dark blue. Stems erect, slender, in shady locations overhanging to decumbent. Leaves opposite, ovate, long acuminate, up to 8 cm long.
  • Vorkommen: Moorwiesen, Waldränder und Bergmischwälder im Alpenvorland und den Alpen. Auf frischen bis feuchten, meist kalkreichen, modrig-torfigen Böden. Ziemlich selten.

Yellow lady shoe

Marien­frauen­schuh (Cypripedium calceolus)

  • Orchid family (Orchideceae)
  • Blooms from June to July
  • Appearance: alternate, stem-clasping, ovate, with entire margins, 20 - 60 cm long
  • Habitat: Occurs at 900 - 1,700 m, prefers sparse, lime- and humus-rich ravine forests, mountain pine scrubs
  • Highly endangered, is under strictest nature protection in all European countries

Fun Facts: The flower is a kettle trap. Sand bees looking for nectar slip down the smooth walls of the lip and can only leave it again through narrow openings at the rear end. In doing so, they become coated with pollen packets and unload brought pollen at the stigma. They are guided through light-colored "windows" at the rear of the lip.
 

Silverthistle

(Carlina acaulis)

  • Compositae (Asteraceae)
  • Blooms from June to September
  • Appearance: 3 – 40 cm tall plant with a 5 - 12 cm flower corolla, at the end sometimes very short, sometimes up to 40 cm long stem. The whitish to reddish colored tubular flowers inside the corolla are surrounded by the radiantly spreading, silvery-white shiny inner bracts.
  • Habitat: Grows on nutrient-poor, loamy, often calcareous soils in lean meadows and pastures as well as in sparse forests up to 2,800 m above sea level..

Fun Facts: The large flower baskets, of the plant popularly known as "weather thistle", are wide open in sunshine. In rain, fog and at night, the silvery white bracts close, protecting the tubular flowers from wetness and cold.

Round-leaved sundew

(Drosera rotundifolia)

  • Sundews Droseraceae
  • Blooms from July to August
  • Appearance: Up to 12 flowers on a leafless stem, this 3 - 7 times longer than the leaves, petals around 5 mm long. Leaves suddenly narrowed into the stalk
  • Habitat: raised bogs, fens, springs, ditch margins, wet heaths
  • Protected

Fun Facts: The flower is a kettle trap. Sand bees looking for nectar slip down the smooth walls of the lip and can only leave it again through narrow openings at the rear end. In doing so, they become coated with pollen packets and unload brought pollen at the stigma. They are guided through light-colored "windows" at the rear of the lip.
 

Torfmoos

(Sphagnum sp.)

  • Sphagnum mosses (Sphagnaceae). 
  • Appearance: Moss up to 15 cm tall, often growing in dense pads, with a distinctive shape. The individual stems have a palm-like crown, below which are side branches arranged in several whorls.
  • Depending on the type of sphagnum moss, the leaflets are green, red or brownish in color.
  • Habitat: Grows on wet, peaty soils in raised bogs, spring meadows, marsh meadows and bog forests up to 2,300 m above sea level..

Fun Facts: Peat mosses can store about 20 times their dry weight in water and play a central role in the formation of meter-thick layers of peat in raised bogs: They only grow at the top, their lower parts die off quickly. In the wet, oxygen-poor and acidic subsoil, this dead material is only incompletely decomposed and pressed under increasing pressure - peat is formed. In Central Europe, peatlands form about 1 mm of peat per year.