Description

A nature tour immersed in nature at the Sila National Park.

Arrival in Cupone, close to Lake Cecita, in the municipality of Spezzano della Sila. The characteristic of this locality is the loricate pine, an ancient specimen inside wooded areas.

The visit begins with the Cupone Visitor Centre, created by adapting the spaces around a state-owned sawmill. Today it is an environmental education centre from which several nature trails start, with wildlife observatories, a geological garden and a botanical garden.

The latter is located at an altitude of 1,156 meters and offers the characteristic vegetation of the Silan plateau including pine, beech and fir trees in particular has 115 native species of mountain flora calabrese.

Transfer to the farm for lunch.

In the afternoon visit to the Biogenetic Nature Reserve “I Giganti della Sila” or “Giganti di Fallistro”. This is a monumental forest where there are specimens of larch pines up to 45 meters high, with a trunk of 2 meters in diameter and are exceptional especially for their age: there are 58 larch pines over a hundred years old, precisely 350 years.

Their extraordinary height and grandeur make them form a very suggestive natural colonnade. The pine forest, according to some scholars, was planted in the first half of 1600 by a noble landowner who built his summer residence near there, with an adjoining spinning mill.

The owner decided to embellish the area around his residence by creating a sort of botanical garden, planting various species of native plants, typical of the Sila area.

Today there are 58 larch pines, poplars, wild apple trees, mountain maples, beeches and chestnuts. In this biogenetic nature reserve, the plants are not subjected to human intervention but are left to grow naturally, exposed to normal biological processes, respecting biodiversity and the ecosystem.

Then on to Camigliatello, an important mountain tourist centre at 1300 metres above sea level.