Moorland

A band of orange-rimmed, silver-blue eyes lines the underside of the Argus blue butterfly's wings. Its name is derived from a Greek legend: The giant Argus watched over his captives with a hundred eyes.
In July, this butterfly can be found over the few remaining raised bogs, heaths or rough grasslands. The development of its caterpillar is fascinating. A remarkable symbiosis develops in the burrow of the black and grey ant: the ants protect the caterpillars from predators and feed on a sugary secretion excreted by the caterpillars.

The high moor yellowfinch is characterized by its bright sulphur-yellow elytra with black marginal bands and the small black spots on the forewings. Females have white wings and the marginal bands are more blurred.

The caterpillars feed exclusively on the leaves of the bog bilberry, which grows on the edges of the still more natural raised bogs in the district of Bad Tölz - Wolfratshausen. The moths themselves find their food in the surroundings of the raised bogs, where there are still flower-rich litter meadows.

In Upper Bavaria, the populations of the raised bog yellows, a highly endangered Ice Age relict, suffered extreme losses around the year 2000. Only a few exceptions of populations in near-natural or renaturalized raised bogs, where peat moss grows particularly well due to high moisture levels, remained unscathed.

Litter meadows with magnificent flowers

Orchids and gentians in the moors on our doorstep? But of course, orchids and gentians are not only found in the tropics or in the mountains, but also in well-preserved moors in the foothills of the Alps, with sufficient water and nutrient-poor soil. Even a single application of fertilizer could cause them to disappear. The main beneficiaries of nutrient input are more competitive plant species such as sweet grasses and tall perennials, which would then displace the orchids and gentians.

But regular mowing and removal of the cuttings are necessary. Even a few years without mowing would lead to matting and wasteland. The thicker and thicker clumps of pipe grass and the accumulating litter layer of dead stalks and leaves would suppress the sensitive beauties and cause them to die, and later bushes and trees would grow. This is why the management of litter meadows is subsidized by the state. The Bavarian Contractual Nature Conservation Program provides financial support to farmers and nature conservation associations that mow litter meadows. Complex scrub clearance measures after many years of fallow land are supported by landscape conservation funds from the Free State of Bavaria and the European Union.

Litter meadows are wet meadows or moor meadows that are traditionally mowed once a year in the fall. They get their name from the use of the mown material as bedding in stables. The mowed material is not suitable as hay for feeding, as it has only a low feed value and contains many hard stems. For a long time, litter meadows were indispensable for keeping cattle in stables in the foothills of the Alps where there is little straw.

Litter meadows are a refuge for rare plants and animals that are often threatened with extinction, such as the dark meadow blue. Compared to 8 to 15 species on intensively used grassland, the number on litter meadows is many times higher at 70 to 90 species. The late mowing allows the seeds of all the flowers to ripen, and birds breeding on the ground can raise their young here.

Litter meadows are a typical, albeit rare, element of today's Alpine foothills landscape. They are particularly impressive due to their abundance of flowers over many months. In autumn, they stand out from their green surroundings with their copper hue.

Due to the conversion of livestock farming to manure management, the need for litter has declined massively in recent decades. Around 80 to 90 percent of the former litter meadows have now been overgrown with bushes, afforested or converted into agricultural grassland through drainage and fertilization. As a result, litter meadows are now highly endangered biotopes. Their great importance for species conservation has only been recognized in recent decades. They are now protected by law as biotopes.

The adder is highly endangered because it has been persecuted for a long time and its habitats and food supply are in sharp decline. It mainly eats small mammals such as mice, as well as lizards and frogs.

They can rarely be seen sunbathing on roadsides in front of near-natural moors and forests. We humans have nothing to fear from them - adders are shy and flee in case of danger. They only bite if you accidentally step on them in tall vegetation or corner them. As a rule, their bite is harmless to humans.

It is usually 50 - 70 cm long and can be gray, brown, copper or black in color. Apart from the black-colored specimens, the dnucleate zigzag band on the back is the most striking feature.

Watch out for insects ....

The name "sundew" comes from the sticky drops that are excreted on the leaves at the tip of the tentacles. When they touch the tentacles, small insects are trapped. The leaf curls up. After several days, digestion is complete and only the insect's chitinous shell remains. The plant uses this strategy to cover its nutrient requirements in the raised bog, which consists of up to 97% rainwater and is therefore very low in nutrients.

If you want to find a sundew, you have to look closely. It stays close to the ground with its rosette of leaves 3 to 15 cm in diameter. The white flowers, which can be seen from June to August, can also be easily overlooked.

Storing water, forming peat, binding greenhouse gases - no easy task for peat mosses

Peat mosses are the main peat formers. They only need the few nutrients that they receive with the rainwater. They absorb large quantities of water, up to 30 times their dry weight. They continue to grow upwards, while the lower parts die and decompose. They are only partially decomposed, so that even in bogs that are thousands of years old, the plant remains can still be determined. Even when dead, they store water in particularly suitable cells and between the layers of peat that have been deposited. In the upper decimeters, the water evaporates again and again, the peat mosses dry out, many interstitial spaces are temporarily filled with air and are available as reversible storage spaces for precipitation events.

The common cottongrass is found exclusively in raised bogs. While it often blooms unnoticed between the last remnants of snow in March, the shiny white fruit hairs catch the eye from the end of April. As the hairs are hollow on the inside, they reflect sunlight particularly well. They enable the seeds to fly at least 10 km.

Cotton grass appears as the first colonizer after renaturation measures on open peat soils. In earlier times, the soft hairs were used as wound padding, pillow filling or for candle wicks. The weathering leaves and stems are an important component of raised bog peat. In contrast to the cotton grass species found in fens, the sheath cotton grass has only one upright flower head.