Today, March 20, 2025, we mark the first day of spring. What most strongly associates with spring is the greenery, but also the spring flowers that emerge even before the greenery. As their name suggests, these are plants that bloom in spring, at the very beginning of the growing season. This characteristic is probably the main reason for the public’s great interest in these species. Although the interest comes from admiration and attention, it has always been accompanied by collecting. Excessive collecting remains the biggest threat to spring flowers today. Another threat is habitat destruction (expansion of construction areas, turning meadows into arable land, deforestation, drainage, and land reclamation, etc.).
National and international regulations now help protect and ensure the survival of these species. The Environmental Protection and Nature Institute launched the “Have You Seen Them? – Spring Flowers” campaign in 2024. In the first year of implementation (during just two months), 544 plant species were reported, with 136 participants involved. By collecting data on observations of spring flowers, valuable information was gathered about many rare and endangered species, more was learned about the distribution of common spring-flowering species, and new observation locations were discovered.
In order to obtain new data and detect changes in species distribution, the campaign continues, which is why we invite you to report spring flowers in your area this year as well! To this end, the “Have You Seen Them? – Spring Flowers” project was created in the iNaturalist app. To start, you need to install iNaturalist on your mobile phone and register. The next step is to photograph and record your first spring flower through the app. If you wish to follow updates related to the “Have You Seen Them? – Spring Flowers” project, you can become a member of the project, although this step is not necessary for your spring flower to be recorded in the system. Once the app is installed, you can use it not only for spring flowers but also to report and view observations of other species, and it can also assist in identifying unknown species.
