We started doing this botanical walk 5 years ago on New Year’s Eve. Its organizers are Botanika Sestao and Lurgaia. Unfortunately they only organize this on New Year’s Eve and no one organizes a tour in the spring. Then three years ago together with Haria Elkartea we started doing the spring tour. This year, due to the confinement only the people of Bakio could come but there were nevertheless more than 20 people in total and we saw a total of almost 100 flower species in bloom.
Thankfully they hadn`t cut the grass edges before doing the walk! In many parts of Europe they only cut the grass once a year! It’s so much cheaper! As well as that, wild flowers are very pretty and a must-have for pollinators like bees and butterflies. However, in recent years our pollinator population has dropped dramatically despite the fact that we all know how important they are to farmers. Without pollinators what would our farmers do? That’s why there’s a special initiative from Europe to protect pollinators but it seems the institutions here don’t know anything about it!
At the end of the walk we saw a special flower that was not yet in flower, Glaucium flavum, the maritime poppy. It was an extinct flower in Bizkaia, but there are five specimens in Bakio though it could be somewhere else. A few years ago a member of the Botanika Sestao association wrote an article about this flower. «The flower that refuses to disappear.» It’s a very interesting article, and last year our friend Agurtzane took a picture of it! Let’s hope we`ll be able to see it in flower by the end of this month!
And we can’t finish this article without mentioning our special guide, Gorka Basterretxea. We contacted him two days earlier after seeing his photos on the Bermeo Mountain Group blog and he had no hesitation in coming to help us. There are two sections in the blog. One is every day, a flower species, so 356 flower photos and another section of 100 flowers on 1st January! Thank you Gorka! Thanks to you our knowledge has increased enormously! You are as knowledgeable as you are modest! We very much hope this won`t be the last time you accompany us!!