It is not only a bellflower which is named after Baron Karel Zois, he also gave his name to a yellow flowering pansy, which his younger brother, Žiga Zois, found more than 200 years ago in "the Carniolan Alps which border on Carinthia", so in the Karavanke. He sent it living, still with earth, to the Klagenfurt Jesuit and natural historian, Franc Ksaver Wulfen, who described it and called it Zois' Violet.
Zois' Violet is in the pansy family. The Karavanke Violet is a similar small pansy. It is some 10 cm high, it has oviform or circular leaves and yellow flowers. Four of the petals are turned upwards, and the fifth downwards. It flowers in May and June on high mountain grasslands and scree in the central part of the Karavanke, from Dovška Baba, Golice, Belščica, Stol, Zelenica to Ljubeljska Baba or Košutica.
Almost 100 years after its discovery, it was still considered a great botanical rarity. It was later found in the mountains of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania. Its localities in the Karavanke are completely isolated, so this Balkan high mountain species is relatively endemic in Slovenia.
Zois' Violet is classified in the Red List of threatened plant species among rare species also because its classical locality is here.
In an exhaustive expert description, its godfather, Wulfen, poetically called it "the most beautiful child of our mountains".
