Blagay's Daphne (Daphne blagayana)

The first custodian of the Provincial Museum in Ljubljana was the natural historian, Henrik Freyer. He is best known in the botanical world as the godfather of Blagay's Daphne, the plant about which Slovene botanists have probably written most.

In 1837, one of the farmers from Sveti Lavrenc brought the Polhov gradec Count Rihard Blagay the flowering branch of a yellow daphne. The count sent it to Ljubljana to his friend Freyer, who recognised it as new and named it after the sender. The new species of daphne in the herbarium collection of German dried flowers quite simply conquered Europe.

In 1838, the "famous Saxon King Frederick Augustus II, well-known as an enthusiastic botanist and a special patron of this science" came to see it in its birthplace. "In the forest on the northern slopes under the church, His Highness experienced the pleasure at 11 o'clock of being the first foreigner to pick the beautiful, pale daphne with his own hands, in its only locality ".

In memory of the king's visit, the same year Blagay set up a unique, four metre high monument to the king, his visit, and the daphne which had begun to be known as the king of flowers.

For some decades, Blagay's Daphne remained a botanical rarity, a mark of Carniola. Only later was it ascertained that it is an Illyrian species which is also distributed in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. It even grows elsewhere in Slovenia: in Posotelje, Zasavje, in Kočevje, in the Polhovgradec hills and in the valley of the Trubušnica in Primorska. Some years ago, it was found in the Carnian Alps in Italy.