Just a Perfect Day #7 - The Blue Forest

For those of you who enjoy breathtaking beauty of nature, and especially those who enjoy taking photos of it, I'm pretty sure name Hallerbos rings all the bells. Well, at least those blue ones...

_{Hallerbos, author Donar Reiskoffer CC BY 3.0}

Hallerbos is the forest in Belgium, in the municipality of Halle, famous for its bluebell carpet, that forms in early spring. And as all the beautiful and special things in life, blooming season of these charming flowers lasts too short as well - if you want to admire their beauty, you have a two week window to do that, which usually takes place in the mid April. If you miss it, well, no worries, precious bluebells will be back, but next year.

Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

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Common bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) belongs to the Asparagaceae family, or in other words, to the family of flowering plants (you don't say?). The specific "non-scripta" part of the Latin name of this plant was introduced in order to distinguish bluebells from a hyacinth, also known as a mythical flower from Greek mythology. According to the myth, Apollo made this flower from the blood of dying Hyacinthus, which was his lover.

Except being used for it's charming looks as a gardening plant, several chemicals that have been extracted from bluebells can have potential medical use. In the UK, Hyacinthoides non-scripta is even a protected species.

_{Hyacinthoides non-scripta, author MichaelMaggs CC BY-SA 3.0}

The Blue Forest

Since the start of the blooming season depends mostly on the weather conditions and temperatures, it usually never happens at the same time each year. Luckily, on the official website of Hallerbos you can keep track of the vegetation changes in the forest, almost in real time, so nature lovers and passionate photographers can be sure they won't miss the bluebell blooming.

Throughout the forest there are several walking paths you can take and basically it's forbidden to stray from them, of course for the purpose of protection of the flowers. If you want to have a professional photo-shooting in the forest, you have to request for special permission to do so, staying on the paths all the time, of course.

Since I'm a hopeless romantic, I have a special thing for sunsets, and especially for golden hours (if you haven't prepared your throw up bags already, now might be too late). In Hallerbos, the trees are not growing too dense, so if you arrive at the right time of the year and at the right time of the day, you will be rewarded with magical interplay of light coming from the sun rays, and shadows from the trees.

And that looks something like this (I had to break the rules a little and stray from the path, but shhhhh!):

_{Taken with Canon EOS 600D, photo credit @alexs1320}

I think it was worth it ;)

Until next cheezy post, relax and keep steemSTEM!