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Those who truly love the mountains love them all year round, and find plenty to interest them in every season. But for those who also take great pleasure in the delicate beauty of splendid flowers in bloom, which transform the mountains into delightful natural gardens, spring and early summer are undoubtedly the best time for a trip. And if the mountains are the Belluno Dolomites, then the experience becomes truly spectacular, for here you can find one of the largest and most important gardens in Europe, in terms both of the variety and number of flowering species present. More than a quarter of the floral species which exist in Italy - over 6000 - can be found here; some are endemic to this particular area, i.e. they live only in this part of the Alps, still others are rare and grow no further beyond.

And then there are the truly exceptional cases, such as the Vette Feltrine, the most westerly mountains in the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park, where, in an area of around 3000 hectares, you can see over 1100 different species of plants. The secret of this floral paradise lies in the variety of environmental conditions present in the area, in the microclimate and in the diversity of the soil of the Dolomites, which renders them virtually unrivalled in the Alps as far as flowers are concerned. The Busa delle Vette [1], formerly known as “Busa delle meraviglie”, is one of the environments of greatest naturalistic interest in the Belluno Dolomites. In few other places can you observe such important floristic valences together with such fascinating geological and geomorphological phenomena (superb stratifications, glacial and Carsic phenomena) in a landscape of rare beauty and appeal.

The itinerary starts out from the Croce d’Aune Pass [2] (1015 m), situated at the south-western edges of the Park, and continues for the most part along a good military road (signposted 801), passsing first of all by the Giorgio Dal Piaz Mountain Refuge (1993 m). At some points the military road is cut into the rock, and on these rock walls, from May onwards, you can see interesting specimens of bear’s ear primrose, butterwort, dwarf rhododendron and the rare Saxifraga burserana. The Busa delle Vette can easily be reached in just minutes from the refuge, continuing along the mule-track with goes up towards the Vette Grandi Pass (1999 m), from which there is an absolutely unforgettable view.