A promotional slogan proclaims that Italy has a green heart: Umbria. A heart pulsing with green life, as one may readily confirm while crossing its hills, its plains, its mountains, its valleys lush with vegetation. All of this is the fruit of a position at the very centre of the boot, with the Apennines to shield the region from the Balkan air currents, where, all things considered, hot and cold meet and balance one another out. The variety of its orographic and geo-pedological features does no less to encourage the variability of that green mantle, its tones now bright, now sombre. The prasinophobes[1] may perhaps think this is no land for them, but they are mistaken. Here there is a moment in the life of plants when even they may reap the benefit: the moment of the “flowering”.

The colour (and the form) of flowers stand, in a sense, for the very soul or spirit of the plant. A surplus value that we grasp not with our cognitive faculties alone, but with our ideal, abstract and creative ones as well. Above all when plants form vast and populous colonies (half a million or so plants per hectare, depending on the space each one takes up), the flowers produce an effect of planar expansion in coloured patches of powerful scenic impact: powerful, too, is the sensation the observer receives on feeling that stupor naturae which lies beyond the bare, brute physiological mechanism of our dependence on plant organisms.

Plants do everything they can to make themselves beautiful at the moment of flowering. The structure of the flower answers to a procreative purpose that strives for the maximum result. At first the flower protects itself with a wrapping (sepals > calyx) until it is sexually mature. Then it “explodes”, unfurling the coloured “banners” that together make up the corolla (the petals). Further within lie the stamens and pistils, the true sexual organs. Colour is an integral part of the process of attraction and reveals the plant’s most “individual” side, its “character”. Plants are like prima donnas striving to draw attention to themselves; the flower is nothing but an apparatus of “leaves”, metamorphosed in various ways so that reproduction may proceed as well as possible, a reproduction that, in the last analysis, takes concrete shape in the production of seeds. The higher the number of fertilised ovules, and hence of seeds formed, the greater the species’ chances of survival. This is especially true of annual plants, those, that is, with a short life cycle of only a few months, whose chances cannot be repeated (as they can, by contrast, for perennial species) on account of the withering and death of the “parent” plant. This explains the high number of individuals a species seeks to reach, more individuals, more probability, for the sake of preserving its own genetic endowment, its own DNA. The “flowerings” are nothing but the outcome of this vital mechanism, manifesting itself in the simultaneous blossoming of all the individuals of the species.

Today’s fields abound in green, because the attendant plants that once accompanied cultivated species have all but vanished. The war on weeds has diminished, where it has not outright robbed, the fields of those colours that once made them lively and “pleasing”. Only with the introduction of certain crops which, as it happens, always have the aim of producing great quantities of seed has man made amends for this theft of vividness from the fields, a theft the purists of natural agronomic processes hold to be sacrilege. There is no denying it: the spectacle can be measured in the great expanses of rape and sunflower, and of the odd medicinal-industrial plant such as flax and others. Yet these are always single-species crops owing to the hand of man, and therefore to be classed as “pseudo-flowerings”.

But let us return to the green heart. To enjoy to the full the natural chromatic phenomenon that recurs every year, one must move towards the eastern part of the “heart”. Paraphrasing anatomy, we might say towards the arterial compartment, the most oxygenated one, at the level of the mitral valve, between atrium and ventricle. Physically, that is, in that geographical area where, whether because of its centuries-long remoteness, or the mountain setting that defines it, or the idea of natural cultivation carried on by local farmers in the name of tradition, or the species grown according to the local climatic conditions, time seems to have stood still. I am referring to the mountain district of Norcia or, better still, to the karst uplands of Castelluccio and the mountains that ring them: here agronomic practice has stopped decades in the past. It is here, in the lentil fields, that each year the renowned “flowerings” renew themselves, without doubt the most sought-after in Italy for numbers of visitors, photographs and films. The place is likewise the stage for events and cultural and promotional happenings that trade on the magic of colour which attends it, a stage, moreover, for stories, legends and popular beliefs, forever interwoven with some environmental landmark or other (the Grotta della Sibilla, Guerino detto il Meschino, the Lago di Pilato, the Via delle Fate, the Battaglia del Pian Perduto, the Faggio del Diavolo, and so on).

One of the passes by which to enter this landscape from the Norcia side is the saddle of Monte Ventosola, just above the Rifugio Perugia. The sudden revelation of the Pian Grande, with Castelluccio in the background to the left and Monte Vettore to the right, never disappoints. To reach the cultivated fields one must cross two-thirds of the Pian Grande. The fields, laid out in a centuriated grid, lie in the area at the foot of Castelluccio and extend both north of the village into the Pian Perduto and eastward, reaching right to the foot of the Costa del Vettore and climbing back up along the edges of the provincial road, on up towards Forca di Presta. It is in these fields that, between the end of March and the first days of April, the lentil was sown (though not it alone).

These fields would be wholly unremarkable were we to consider the lentil crop alone. Plant life, in fact, seems to burst forth solely through the weed species that keep the lentil company. These have the advantage of small leaf systems held close to the ground (and so they find room to grow alongside the lentil), yet they reach a height well above the lentil’s own. It is they, therefore, that thrust themselves boldly into view at flowering time. And the lentil? The lentil has grown and flowered, like all plants, but it takes no part in the “flowering” (as many people wrongly believe). In terms of colour it has small white flowers (barely veined with violet), inconspicuous, even though in botany white is reckoned a colour. What is more, being a trailing annual, it remains “submerged” beneath the weeds, themselves annuals, that live alongside it. Among these weeds, three densely dominant species put themselves on show. Their corollas appear vividly coloured in yellow, red and blue (RYB), the triad of primary colours on any standard artist’s colour wheel. These weeds are rival plants, and they profit from the fact that in these crops no weeding is carried out, neither chemical nor mechanical, a treatment that would deprive even the inattentive observer of that magnificent explosion of colour which is, precisely, the “flowering”. And that flowering, I repeat, is bound tightly to the lentil fields, even though the lentil takes no active part in it, remaining in the shade of the weeds, which shield it from excessive heat.

The cultivation of the lentil at Castelluccio began, in all likelihood, with the founding of the village, or at any rate from the presence of its first settled inhabitants: those shepherd-farmers who wisely knew how to strike a balance between natural productivity (fodder, hay, timber, honey, mushrooms, soft fruits, and so on) and the yield of livestock and tillage, the latter, however, confined to the few species that could be grown at that altitude and in those climatic conditions. The community of Castelluccio, given the village’s isolated position and the high altitude at which it lies, had to meet its food needs self-sufficiently. Hence the cultivation of species of prized nutritional value such as lentil, rye, grass pea and the like.

The lentil, for those who do not know it well, is scientifically called Lens culinaris Medik. (syn. L. esculenta). The generic name suits it well, given the shape of its seeds (one to three per pod): semi-rounded, biconvex, lens-shaped, like a little lens (in mock Latin, lenticula). The specific name, for its part, alludes to its edible use (esculenta) or its use in the kitchen (in Latin, culina). It belongs to the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), whose typical morphological features it displays. It is an annual herbaceous plant with a relatively short biological cycle. The predominant colour of its petals is white. It is unknown in the wild and is therefore found only under cultivation: its origin is a mystery. It is known to be one of the first species domesticated by man. Archaeological evidence traces its use as a food to more than 10,000 years ago. The Castelluccio cultivar is a product of Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), typical of the karst plains of that area, the Pian Perduto included. It is rather small in size and polychrome in appearance.

Few are the species that can be grown on the karst plains of Castelluccio, because at that altitude a plant’s biological cycle must be very short, given the presence of snow and cold until late spring and the looming summer drought that sets in if the rains fail. When it does not rain, the plant makes shift as best it can and takes shelter beneath the weeds. Once the snows have melted, cultivation of the lentil proceeds with the ploughing of the fields and then the sowing, still carried out today, mechanically but also by traditional means and techniques, between the end of March and the first ten days of April, according to conditions, and even following the lunar cycle, as in the old days. Well-drained, gently sloping ground is preferred, to keep the root from rotting in standing water. In early June, say about a month and a half after sowing, the lentil plants have grown enough and are already in flower; but the weeds, whose seeds already lay in the soil, have been just as quick to germinate and to grow taller than the crop. It is in this first phase of development that we see the part played by the ever-present wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis L.), a weed easily recognised by the great expanses of yellow it produces, an effect owed to its yellow racemose inflorescences. This species, an annual with a faster cycle than the lentil, has an erect stem, with a terminal flowering axis bare of leaves and laden instead with flowers: a trait that visibly colours the crop and masks, without submerging, the shorter lentil. As the final act of its cycle, the small, globose, blackish-brown seeds, no larger than 2 mm across, fall to the ground and wait patiently for another chance to germinate.

In the meantime, though, the seeds of other weeds have germinated and other plants have grown. The germination of weeds is like a time trial: before one plant reaches the finish, another competitor has already “set off”, and before this one arrives still others have “set off” too. In short, it is a race against the clock that the weeds run, yet one that respects the photoperiod and the thermoperiod, that is, the right amounts of light and heat each species needs in order to germinate, grow, flower, fruit and scatter its seed. As if to say, according to the “power” each competitor is able to muster. The difference from a time trial is that here every competing plant exploits the slipstream of the rivals that “set off” before it.

And so, the wild mustard has not yet quite reached the final finish line (seed dispersal) when the corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas L.) has already come a long way in its cycle of development: in sporting terms, it is arriving at the intermediate stage of flowering. It is also called rosolaccio, a term that derives from the Latin rosula (from rosa, by way of the adjectival form rosulaceus). This too is an annual plant, up to a metre tall, with an erect, branching stem bearing terminal flowers. The petals are red, quick to fall, and blotched with black at the base. Depending on the locality, it flowers from April to mid-July. The poppy is taller than the charlock and has far larger corollas: as all the plants flower at once, the lentil field, that ever pale and washed-out thing hidden in the midst, inevitably undergoes a chromatic explosion turning from yellow to red, a scarlet red, flaming, dazzling beneath the summer sun, now in the sign of Cancer. The emotional response before the great poppy fields of Castelluccio is intense, extraordinary, instinctive, given that elsewhere today the few scattered poppies are relegated only to the margins of crops. The pull of the poppy-strewn fields is so great that people cannot resist plunging into them, if only for a simple keepsake photograph, with all due respect to the ignored and bedraggled lentil, which, trampled underfoot, is unhappily the one to pay the price. And it is as well that these are not opium poppies, or else… farewell, lentils!

The poppy’s fruit contains a great many tiny seeds, which escape through the pores that form beneath the stigmatic disc. A slight shake from the wind is enough for them to spill out of the mother plant, by now well and truly spent, and fall to the ground.

Even before the poppies have quite finished flowering, another chromatic player makes its entrance, a species that set off together with the lentil and follows its cycle exactly, apparently acting as a “wheel-sucker”. This is the cornflower. At first the cornflowers seem to play hide-and-seek with the lentil, but once they come to reign with the vivid, near-blue azure of their corollas, they seem to overwhelm it. Since the cornflower reaches a fair size and a high density, one might imagine a further appreciable drop in the harvest. The lentil, in fact, has no choice but to submit to them; yet it is precisely from this situation that it draws benefit, for the cornflowers shield it from the sun and help it retain the moisture it needs. The cornflower (Centaurea cyanus L.) is an annual plant, or better still one with a four-month cycle. Which is to say? That in four months, save the rarest exceptions, it is born, grows and dies, exactly like the lentil. The generic name Centaurea comes to it from the centaur Chiron, a mythical figure of antiquity given to medical pretensions who, wounded in the foot by a poisoned arrow, healed himself with the juice pressed from the flowers of this species. The specific name C. cyanus refers to the colour of the flowers, coming as it does from the Greek κύανος (= kýanos, the tint blue). The common Italian name fiordaliso, on the other hand, derives from the French fleur de lys (lily flower) which, thanks to the regal look of the blooms, is known in heraldry as the lily of France and tied to the dynasty of the transalpine royal house from the Merovingians onward. In French it is also called bleuet.

It can reach a height of 90 cm, more than enough to mask the sorry state the lentil plant is taking on in its final phase. The cornflower’s flowering axis is erect, leafless, and bears the classic flower heads, that is, contracted inflorescences shaped like little heads, carrying only tubular florets, the outer ones spreading so that the whole head shows to greater effect. The entire plant is covered in a soft, whitish, almost cobwebby down, which serves to slow transpiration in dry places. Cornflower blooms are used to prepare eyewashes: by the logic of the doctrine of signatures, the vivid azure that so often recalls the colour of the pupils is not unconnected with this. As for the cornflower in painting, it is often linked to nature’s springtime reawakening: one need only cite, for all the rest, the case of Botticelli, who reproduced it in the Primavera, it is among the species issuing from the mouth of Chloris and strewn on Flora’s dress, and in The Birth of Venus, painted all over the robe of the Hora who moves to cover Venus with a mantle. In the language of flowers, it is said to represent happiness in love, gentleness and lightness.

Other species, such as vetch or viper’s bugloss, can, in certain particular situations (damp ground, the vicinity of sheepfolds, and so on), give rise to patches of colour: blue-violet in the first case, pale sky-blue in the second, but small in extent and in no way comparable to those of the three main species.

And if the colours of the lentil fields should not suffice to satisfy the demanding “palate”, it is always worth coming to the area in early May. At that time there is as yet no “flowering” in the lentil fields, but the visitor whose spirit is more that of the naturalist-artist than of the “selfie-and-flee” tourist will not, as far as flowering goes, come away disappointed. He need only feel like walking a little and looking about him. In the lowest part of the Pian Grande, on the side towards the sinkhole and furrowed by the Fosso dei Mergani, he may admire, all of it pure nature, the “flowering” of the jonquils. It is as though some Great Artist had spread out a white-and-yellow sheet to cover the meadow, not yet wholly dried from the lingering snow. A sea of white jonquils (or narcissi, if you prefer), interspersed with yellow islands of buttercups, seems to enfold and almost submerge whoever ventures into the midst of that white mantle. Here one feels the intrinsic “force” of nature: the emotion of walking amid a dense throng of narcissi lasts a lifetime. An act that charges with energy the mind of anyone who immerses himself in that inviting sea. Where only a few days before there was snow or water, now a myriad of narcissi, accompanied here and there by patches of buttercups that dwell in the dolines, offer their white, nodding flowers to the air, transforming those seemingly featureless meadows into a palette all their own. There are, of course, other species as well, such as the small wild tulip with its pointed yellow petals. Or the bistort with its little pink spikes, which flowers a few days later, however, together with many other species, but in such numbers as to make up yet another “flowering” in its turn.

The visitor may also pause to look into the little valleys of the slope that runs down from the road towards the Piano, or venture on an easy walk into the Val Canatra, which lies to the left, beyond Castelluccio: there, to his utmost surprise, he will find the “flowering” of the wild peonies, with their beautiful burgundy-red blooms that, like some precious casket, open slowly to the first warmth of the sun, miming the gesture of a fist unclenching.

And if our hypothetical visitor is also something of a sportsman, then besides looking at the “flowerings” of the meadows he may climb to the summits of the surrounding mountains, where he will be able to see the “flowering” of a myriad species famous for their rarity and the beauty of their blooms: among them, to name but a few, reign the Eugenia’s violets (yellow and blue), then the marvellous gentians that form veritable little lawns of vivid blue, among the rocks the alpine poppy (its cloak no longer red but yellowish), and the legendary edelweiss, whitish and downy the better to fend off the cold. But do not dare to pick them: it is strictly forbidden and… very costly!

In the final analysis, we may say that the “flowering”, or the “flowerings”, of Castelluccio are not merely a jumble of colours, but the outcome of a synchronised mechanism that engages the biological cycles of a great many species, wild or weedy, which in this case stand alongside the lentil in exploiting the particular soil and climatic conditions under which the crop is grown. The rhythm of flowering, seemingly uniform, is in reality the fruit of competition within the plant community, one both rich and highly varied. A struggle for life and for living space in which, in the end, the timid lentil turns out to be the true ruler, since it is the only species to be harvested. Were there no weeds, their lovely bloomings would never occur, to the loss of all who know how to appreciate, enjoy and respect them.

To conclude, and keeping to the lentil fields, there are three intensive bloomings to be observed almost in succession: the yellow of the mustard or charlock, the red of the poppies and the blue of the cornflowers. Without straying from the furrow, the phrase could not be more apt here, it should be stressed that the three bloomings make up the full set of primary colours used by painters: yellow, red and blue. From these three colours any other colour can be obtained, beginning with the secondary ones (green, orange, violet), if the primaries are blended in equal parts.

Is there a reason why the three colours of the flowering strike the observer so forcibly? What effect do they produce? A thorough answer would be long and complex. In brief: of all the electromagnetic frequencies that exist, man is able to perceive only a small portion as light (wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometres). Colours are generated by our visual perception, which processes the wavelengths coming from light and turns them into the various colours we see. Colours, then, are nothing but the result of the analysis (or, if you like, the translation) the brain makes of the frequencies striking the retina. Many vital functions, appetite, mood, sleep, states of anxiety, and so on, are readily swayed by colour, so much so that there exists a pseudoscience called chromotherapy, devoted to studying its effect on people’s well-being. From this point of view, one begins to suspect that so many people rush to see the “flowering” in order to cure their own ailments! One thing is certain: that certain frequencies condition our psychophysical state and reflect our personality. One need only think how strongly shades of colour bear on the choice of a dress, a tie, a painting, or the paint on the walls of a room. But here, in this corner of the world where legends merge with reality, the influence of colour has perhaps something more to it, enriched as it is by the “Sibylline enchantment”.

Notes

1) From the Greek prasinos, dark green. Phobias may concern colours in general (chromophobia) or individual colours: melanophobia (black), xanthophobia (yellow), rhodophobia (pink), cyanophobia (blue), leucophobia (white), and so forth.

Alessandro Menghini, lecturer in Botany at the University of Perugia, where he has held teaching posts in several Departments. Within his own field of study and research he has addressed a wide range of subjects, from systematic botany to matters of applied character, including environmental and historical ones. He has also taken an interest in themes connected with the symbolism of plants. To his name are more than 200 scientific publications in national and international journals. He is the author of several books and studies, as well as of numerous popular articles.