[Alisdair]

On the Mediterranean Garden Society trip to Croatia in late April / early May 2013, Chris Gardner took us to some wonderful spots for wildflowers that he had tracked down on his recce the previous year. I'm posting pictures of a few of them here, both to give an idea of the range and perhaps to help people who'd like to put a name to plants that they see there. My pictures are only a small fraction of the hundreds we did see (I can email a more or less full list of the plants we saw to any forum member who'd like one, if you email me privately using the MY MESSAGES tab near the top left of the screen).
To keep it simple I'll run through in alphabetical order (but leave orchids to the end).
Let me know if I've got the wrong name!

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Linum tauricum seen quite abundantly above Dubrovnik - it's out of alphabetical order because until Fermi kindly corrected me I had it wrongly labelled as an Alyssum

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Anemone ranunculoides, in the woodland at Plitvice

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Antirrhinum majus, fairly widespread and perhaps naturalised rather than native

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Antirrhinum majus again, here presumably via bird droppings seeded high into a public building in one of the towns

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Campanula fenestrellata, one of the rock-hugging species, here on limestone on Mt Biokovo

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Campanula lingulata, a fairly common roadside annual

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Convolvulus thunbergii (syn. Convolvulus altheoides); widespread by roadsides and rocky places

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Crocus vernus ssp. albiflorus, on Biokovo; Brian Mathew says that if he were rewriting his Crocus monograph now he would be tempted to treat this as a separate species, Crocus albiflorus

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Crocus vernus on Biokovo; the normal blue-purple form of the above plant

[Alisdair]

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Cyclamen repandum in rocky woodland on Mt Biokovo; often in great scented drifts

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Edraianthus pumilio, tucked into a rocky place above Dubrovnik

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Erythronium dens-canis, the dog's-tooth violet - though related to lilies rather than violets; Mt Biokovo

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Fritillaria montana, again on Biokovo

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Hepatica nobilis, one of the last few still in flower (most were over), at Plitvice

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Iris pseudopallida widespread on the Dalmatian coastal hills; some argument about whether it's truly native or naturalised - and whether it's right to count it as a true species separate from Iris pallida

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A closer look at Iris pseudopallida; when I was taking the picture I hadn't noticed the little bee on the left, homing in on it

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Lithodora diffusa on Biokovo

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Narcissus poeticus in an alpine meadow on Biokovo

[Alisdair]

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Petasites albus, the seedheads of this big lush waterside plant so emblematic of Plitvice's amazing water-world

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Cowslips, Primula veris, with a grape hyacinth, Muscari aucheri, on the lower slopes of Mt Biokovo

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Reseda tridentata tucked into the protection of a spiny bush above Dubrovnik; as with many other very small plants, it's well worth getting down on hands and knees for a close look at the flowers

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Salvia officinalis quite widespread and rather variable, with some fine forms on Hvar

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Scilla litardieri in a fold of the hills above Dubrovnik

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Thymus pulegioides (I think!), one of several thyme species here that we saw and smelled crawling through the grasses and over rocks

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Tragopon porrifolius - the giant dandelion-clock seedheads follow the flowers very quickly

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Trigonella kotschyi on the higher slopes of Hvar Island

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Vincetoxicum canescens - or more properly Cynanchum canescens which is its currently accepted name; its old name, which means "poison beater", comes from its supposed traditional use as a snake-bite remedy.

[Alisdair]

We saw over 20 different orchids on this trip, sometimes in enormous numbers. Here are some of them:

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Dactylorhiza sambucina, the elder-flower orchid - so-called from the scent of its flowers; in alpine meadows on Mt Biokovo

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Dactylorhiza sambucina on Biokovo again, where this purple-flowered form was also abundant, flowering together with the yellow versions

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Neottia ovata (syn. Listera ovata), the twayblade, in bud; Plitvice woodland

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Ophrys bertolonii, quite widespread

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Ophrys lutea, on Hvar Island

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Ophrys scolopax subsp. cornuta, one of the more elaborately shaped forms of the woodcock orchid (I've never been able to see anything like a woodcock's feathers in this pretty orchid!); fairly widespread

[Alisdair]

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Orchis italica on Hvar, where it was common...

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... and we also found Orchis italica on an orchid-filled plateau above Dubrovnik, together with Orchis simia which was even more common there, as were forms rather intermediate between the two; sometimes they were growing right beside Orchis anthropophora (syn. Aceras anthropophorum), the plant on the right in this photo

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In this same spot we found quite a lot of orchids like this, hybrids between either Orchis italica or Orchis simia with Orchis anthropophora

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The rather unfairly named Orchis pauciflora ("few-flowered orchid") gave some splendid shows on that same plateau above Dubrovnik, and scattered elsewhere in the coastal hills

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We saw a few Orchis purpurea, the lady orchid, fairly high up at Paklenica

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Probably the most widespread orchid we saw was Orchis quadripunctata, the four-spotted orchid; certainly it gave more concentrated patches than the others, with dozens flowering close together...

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... though for sheer population density Serapias lingua, the tongue orchid, beat the lot, with this close-packed patch on the little island of Lokrum.

[Umbrian]

Wonderful to see Alisdair having had to drop out of the trip. Thank you taking so much time to share them with us via the Forum.

[Alice]

Much appreciated, Alisdair.
The profusion of orchids looks spectacular.