Tremalzo

"Tremalzo is an extraordinary area thanks to its concentration of endemic flowers and it is best known in all Europe as garden for many botanists.

Tremalzo is the name of the mountain group located in the south-west part of Valle di Ledro. It extends from west to east between Monte Bragone dal Sole and Val Marcia and from north to south between Col Pasövri and the old border line between Italy and Austria, now the border between Trentino and Lombardia.
The pass is 1,665 m above sea level but the highest point is Monte Tremalzo peak at 1975 m. Other mountains which belong to Tremalzo are Cima Marogna (1,953 m) which looks towards Lake Garda, Corno Spezzato (1,858 m) facing the valley and Cima Avez (1,895 m) on the west side.
Looking at the map, we are clearly in the Pre-Alps: the height of the mountains is moderate in comparison with the Dolomites and the Adamello Group, which are not very far from here. Tremalzo is situated between the Padana Plain and the Alps.
In summer the climate becomes milder thanks to the influence of Lake Garda, while in winter it snows a lot and the thick blanket of snow lasts from November until April because of its exposure to the north-west.
The area is mainly a big basin where, for centuries, first shepherds and later cowherds have been bringing their beasts to pasture. Green pastures, rich in good grass and wildflowers in summer and no precipices that represent a danger for them made and continue to make the area the ideal place for this activity. The area is now accessible by road but in the past the path that lead to Tremalzo was not so steep, so it was easy to reach even with a large number of animals.
The practice of taking the cattle to high mountain pastures was a necessity for the people of the alpine valleys to improve their poor economy in the face of a harsh natural environment. Not only, it is also a matter of complying with the cattle's needs: producing a good quality product needs a certain kind of pastures and certain temperatures.
The mountain peaks are mainly rocky and covered in bushes of dwarf pines, which grow here in large quantities. Reaching the tops you can enjoy an amazing view over Lake Garda (east), the Adamello Group of mountains (north-west) or Valle di Ledro with its lake and crown of mountains around Val Concei (north). It is quite a steep climb but worthwhile, and the walking time is very short considering you can go up by car as far as 1,700 m.
From the foot of Monte Tremalzo, situated at Passo Ampola, up to 1,750 m, the mountain sides are covered with thick woods, mainly fir-trees, pines and beeches.
Apart from the buildings still used by the cowherds in summer, there are some other buildings and several houses hidden in the woods, signs of the tourist development of Tremalzo, which started during the Seventies and ended a few years ago.

The border between Trentino, province of Trento, and Lombardia, province of Brescia, runs along the ridge of the mountain, perpendicular to Lake Garda. Before the complete unification of Italy of 1918, this was the border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Hapsburg Empire.
During the First World War, Italian soldiers occupied the southern side of the valley and they placed their headquarters at Passo Tremalzo. The Austrians were on the northern side (Cadria group, Saval, Cima d'Oro, S. Giovanni) where they had already dug out several trenches and prepared artillery.
The Italian troops did not have enough time to excavate the rock to make shelters and attack points but they transformed a lot of the old paths that linked the valley to the most important mountains areas into cart tracks to allow a faster transit of the artillery. The most important of these works regarded the road to Tremalzo: the beginning of this road was situated at Passo Ampola and links the alpine pastures of Tiarno di Sotto, Bezzecca and Tiarno di Sopra. At Passo Tremalzo it joins the old Austrian road that leads to Passo Nota (1,208 m) and Limone on Lake Garda.
The road from Ampola to Tremalzo was enlarged and asphalted, later on bringing many benefits to the people of the valley, first for the cowherds and people who worked in the woods and then also to enhance the development of tourism.

The mountains of the area are mainly formed of dolomite, a rock of calcium magnesium carbonate which formed 220 millions years ago.

The flora is very particular and botanists from all over Europe come here to study the endemism. The first to recognize the importance of the area, was Caspar von Sternberg (1761-1838) who, during his trip to Trentino, discovered here a variety of Saxifrage, the Saxifraga arachnoidea, and a new Columbine. In the middle of the 19th century two more experts chose Valle di Ledro for their studies: Francesco Facchini (1788-1852) and Friedrich Leybold (1827-1879). The first found a new Scabious (Scabiosa vestina), the very rare Spitzel's Orchid (Orchis spitzelii) and a Daphne but he did not succeed in publishing this last discovery because he died and so Leybold, who arrived here the same year, officially discovered Daphne petraea (Rock Mezereon). He found also Ranunculus bilobus (Bilobate Buttercup) but it was described only five years later by Bertoloni.
In 1854 Pietro Porta came here and found a Campion with big purple flowers that others had not found: Elisabeth's Campion (Silene elisabethae).
Other botanists have scoured these mountains looking for other plants and still today there are universities who come regularly to study the nature and the environment of Tremalzo, considered one of the richest gardens, from a botanical point of view, thanks to its concentration of endemisms. 

Over the last ten years Tremalzo has become well known also for bird migration, which takes place at Bocca Casèt. Through the Bocca, a small pass, fly thousands of birds during their migrations at the end of the summer. Because the pass is quite high, 1608 m, they fly very close to the ground and for the specialists it is very easy to catch them with nets and ring them to check where they are going and where they are from.