Botanical Exchange Program: Scherbakovsky Nature Park

Today was the wonderful tour of Scherbakovsky Nature Park. We were very excited for the opportunity to stretch our legs, hike a little, and glimpse a few of Russia's beautiful plants in their natural habitat. There are over 300 species of plants in this area and about 50 of them are listed in the Red Book.

Stop #1: Our first stop was the Scherbakovsky Valley. A camera is a poor way to express the immense open space of the valley and ravines, all leading towards the Volga river near the horizon. It was a very warm, sunny, and breezy day and it was a place unlike any other. Despite the extremely dry climate, we made it about ten steps out of the van before finding plants of interest. Several were familiar, but we also met several new acquaintances. As well as the plants, we also were lucky enough to stumble upon an owl pellet, and fossilized remains of ancient squid, as the area was formerly under the sea.

Stop #2: After a brief drive and a temporary blockade of horses brought us much closer to the banks of the Volga and was an even rockier and calcareous area than our previous stop. Walking on some of the stone scree sounded almost like walking on shards of clinking glass. Here we really got some good hill climbing in as we took in fantastic colonies of Allium, Tulipa, and Fritillaria. They were well past flowering of course, but their pods offer a different kind of beauty. It was easy to imagine what the giant swaths of them must look like in bloom. From our height on the banks we could see and hear fishermen in their boats and even a few passing barges.

Stop #3: A welcome relief after the sunny 30C hikes of midday sun. We had a wonderful picnic lunch at an area the locals call Volga Switzerland. The area is so called because many Germans settled the area before WWII. The tree to the right in one of the photos below is a pear tree that was planted in the early 1900s. We were at first invited to wash our hands in the stream, one of the few that runs year round in the area. The picnic was a perfect break from the heat of the day as our hosts explained the areas history while we drank a wonderful home brewed tea with some of the plants Luba collected earlier in the day. Our meal was a hearty soup of chicken, potatoes, and vegetables cooked in an iron pot over the fire, it was some of the finest food you could imagine. Dessert was of course, watermelon. After our meal we were eager to get out and explore the drastically different scenery of the valley. Here, with the additional water and cooler temperatures, we were able to see a few more plants flowering. The hike up the nearby hill was challenging but offered a rewarding view of the forest canopy following the stream below. This was a place we could have easily spent a day exploring and still found new plants by the end of the day.

Stop #4: With daylight fading we set out quickly for one last adventure, a view of some man-made caves dating back to at least the 14th century. On the drive we were lucky enough to see a pair of white-tailed eagles, as well as a couple of rabbits that we mistook for dogs, they were that large. We arrived right at sundown with a little bit of light left for our guide Alexi to explain the area. When people settled the area there wasn't a lot of available material for building houses so they began digging underground for resources. One of these resources was a layer of rock which contained fossils from the sea, it made excellent flooring. As we went down into one of these caves we saw the carved out alcoves for holding lanterns as well as the rough linear lines carved into the cave walls. Further into the cave we were presented with a carved pillar that is believed to play some part in an unknown ritual. Alexi seemed to think it would make a good pillar to make a wish on, so we sent of a few wishes. Twenty five of the tunnels exist around the area, the longest of which runs 700m. The hill nearby was used by a couple of khans as defensible positions to build fortresses and blockade the river for the collection of tolls. As the sun went down we were treated to an otherworldly view of the moon shimmering off the waters of the Volga. It was hard to pull ourselves away and head back for the night.