The limestone-dolomite cliff on which Strečno Castle is built is attractive not only for its dramatic appearance, but also for its specific flora. The inhospitable rock environment has become a haven for light-loving plants that would not survive in the forest involved. In early spring, the March winds are already swaying the bluish buds of the flowering thermophilous calcareous Blue Moor-grass with its tight evergreen clusters of narrow leaves. In April, the banks and crevices of the castle walls are covered with clusters of deep yellow flowers of the Basket-of-Gold. In May, on the other hand, the intense scent of the gracefully ruffled white flowers of the Early Carnation, which is found only in the mountains of the Western Carpathians and is included in the Red List of Endangered Plants of Slovakia because of its rarity, is typical. From spring to autumn, filigree rosettes of leaves of the small but distinctive fern Maidenhair Spleenwort grow in rock crevices.
A view of the castle cliff and the castle of Strečno
Do you know the story of the Sand Rock-cress? It’s a tiny and unpretentious plant and yet it has made a „hole“ in European science.
The Sand Rock-cress from the Strecnian quarry is interesting because already in 1970 the botanist Josef Měsíček chose it for his research on the genetic information of the plant genus Arabidopsis. Since then, the site of this castle bluff has appeared in several scientific papers on plant heredity, most recently in a 2015 paper by Harvard University scientists on the polyploidization of the Sand Rock-cress.
Science Window: What is polyploidization?
This biological process involved in inheritance is related to the ability of plants to adapt to new conditions and thereby expand into new habitats or create new species. Polyploidization is a genomic mutation. The Sand Rock-cress of the Strecnian castle rock are diploid, but closely related to the more widespread tetraploid populations of the same species that have evolved from them and are common, for example, in railway sidings across Europe. Diploids have a doubled genome i.e. the amount of genetic information/number of chromosomes in a cell, tetraploids quadruple relative to the original.
Literary Sources:
- Slaná, A. 2015. Hradné bralo v Strečne. MÚZA – elektronický časopis Považského múzea. Ročník 3, číslo 2. pp. 10 – 11. Dostupné: https://pmza.sk/muza2-2015-1/muza2-2015-1.html
- Brian Arnold, Sang-Tae Kim, Kirsten Bomblies. Single Geographic Origin of a Widespread Autotetraploid Arabidopsis arenosa L. Followed by Interploidy Admixture. Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 6, June 2015, Pages 1382–1395, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msv089
- Měsíček, J. Chromosome Counts in Cardaminopsis arenosa Agg. ( Cruciferae). Chromozomove počty v komplexu Cardaminopsis arenosa (Cruciferae). PRESLIA (PRAHA) 42: 225–248. 1970. https://www.preslia.cz/archive/Preslia_42_1970_225-248.pdf