We can be honest, hiking in Budapest during early spring is not as beautiful or interesting as in the rest of the year. There is no snow anymore, nothing is green yet, the forest is grey and dull, and we can only find a very few types of mushrooms. Fortunately even in the beginning of this season we have something in the woods to cheer us up on our hike: spring flowers!
The Buda hills give home to a great variety of wild flowers. A single blogpost wouldn’t be enough to list all of them, so I will just mention the most typical ones here.
Common snowdrop
The earliest of all spring flowers, it can even happen that it starts blooming through the snow. Twenty years ago it was not protected, so it was collected in the Buda hills, and sold by old ladies in the underpasses of Budapest, or in flower shops. As a consequence it became so rare in these forests, that from 2005 it became illegal to pick it and sell it. It grows on the northern slopes of the hills as it prefers a cooler climate.
Greater pasque flower
Another very early flower, which has an exotic Hungarian name: ‘leánykökörcsin’. I am always having trouble with translating these names to English, however one of my British guests told me that they call this flower grandma’s head. It has white hair, and keeps its head down, an absolutely neat name indeed.
Winter aconite
The Hungarian name of this flower, ‘téltemető’ truly shows it is the end of winter when it starts blooming, because it can be translated directly as winter burier.
Wood violet & Early dog-violet
Besides the snowdrop, the violet is the most widely known spring flower in Hungary, it is mentioned in the most popular Hungarian Easter poem as well. It has a pleasant fragrance, formerly it was used in perfume production.
Yellow anemone & Wood anemone
You can also run into these flowers easily during your hike in the Buda hills around springtime. Anemones were used as medicines since the old times.
Holewort
It is probably the most common spring flower in the Buda hills. Its purple and white versions can create entire fields under the trees, and as they have a strong fragrance, you can hike through a scent cloud while passing by them.
Lesser celandine
Would you think while hiking in Budapest, that this cute little flower is a threat to anything? This yellow buttercup is native in Europe, but it was taken to North-America where it became an invasive plant endangering indigenous flowers.