Primorska Whin or Entire-Petalled Gorse (Genista holopetala)
 Primorska Whin or Entire-Petalled Gorse (Genista holopetala) |
Andrej Fleischmann was gardener at the Ljubljana Botanical Gardens for 48 years in the last century, having arrived as a student of the botanist, Franc Hladnik. He was then barely 14 years old. He tramped with his teacher all over Carniola and also in neighbouring lands. At first they gathered plants together for the garden and herbaria, but Fleischmann later took sole charge of the Botanical Garden.
On one of his excursions, he found on Čaven a new plant and described it as Primorska Whin or Entire-petalled Gorse. He sent a dried example to Germany for the German collection of dried flowers, which was published in a number of editions, and they sent it to different museums and natural history institutions throughout Europe. Normally, descriptions of new species are published in newspapers or books, but the birth certificate of the Primorska Whin is the page of a herbarium.
The Primorska Whin belongs to the Pea family. It is a shrub with twisted branches and narrow, compact, perennial, tripartite leaves, which tells us that it is a plant which is adapted to a dry habitat. It has bright yellow papilionaceous flowers. The only Slovene locality of Entire-petalled Gorse is on Čaven on the southern slopes of Trnovo forest. The only locality in neighbouring Italy is on Gabrovo hill by Trieste, and it also grows in Croatia on Velebit.