The famous Scabiosa trenta, the Scabious of Trenta , is a flower that became the symbol of Kugy's youthful searchings. This mysterious plant was found in the second half of the eighteenth century by Balthasar Hacquet (1739 or 1740 - 1851), one of the first natural scientists to study the Slovene flora. In 1782 Hacquet described the Scabious of Trenta in his work Carniolian Alpine Plants (Plantae alpinae Carniolicae), writing that it grew in the Trenta mountains. He also added a drawing of the plant he found, and collected a specimen for his herbarium.
Thereafter, the Scabious of Trenta mysteriously disappeared. Many botanists searched for it, but to no avail. Almost a hundred years later the Trieste botanist Muzio Tommasini brought this unsolved enigma to the attention of young Kugy.
A small, slender apparition, a delicate calyx of shimmering silver, a light, white flowery robe embroidered with golden pistils. This was not a blossom--this was a princess from Never-Never Land. Surrounded by its scent, unknown and enticing, it stood on ancient, faded parchment.
This image brought Kugy to Trenta, the legendary kingdom of the Zlatorog. Later he was to sadly sigh: These mountains have made a gift to me of every rare flower. Only the one I searched for-that one not. The cold, rational understanding of the scientist won out over the dreamy soul of the mountain poet.
The Austrian botanist Anton Kerner did not look for the Scabious of Trenta in the mountains, but instead went to Ljubljana, to the dusty herbarium in the Carniolian Municipal Museum, where Hacquet's specimen was housed. He concluded that the mysterious scabious of Trenta was in fact the common pale "round-head" or the "white tuft" (Cephalaria leucantha), in German Weisser Schuppenkopf that grows in the commons of the karst and on sunny rocks in the submediterranean floral belt. In Slovenia its locations are known in Socerb, Movraž, and Sočerga. The Scabious of Trenta is a relict of the warmer Interglacial Age when the submediterranean flora extended deep into the heart of the Alps. Once the climate again changed, the majority of the plants died out, leaving only a few in the most favourable sites. It is, therefore, possible that Hacquet found the last specimens of this species which his followers could not as in the meantime it had died out. The white tuft in Juliana blossoms in September and October when its pale yellow rounded inflorescences enliven the flower bed otherwise containing flowers not in season to blossom. The plants grown in Juliana have been raised in a garden setting since the times of Albert Bois De Chesne, who cultivated the white tuft from Devin seeds.
Scabiosa trenta... Kugy's heart gives a quiet smile.... In his faithfulness he believes in it, albeit the flower may be unattainable....