Top 10 Places to View Wildflowers in Italy

While tramping through Italy, I have been rewarded with seeing beautiful wildflowers all year round – you just have to choose the season and the place, so don’t look for wildflowers in Sicily when the countryside is parched by the brutal August sun. Here’s a guide to following the wildflower season throughout Italy.

1. Wildflower season in the southern coast of Sicily begins in January and February, with fields of bright yellow sorrel and tiny blue iris carpeting the almond orchards in snowy-white bloom, all especially beautiful at the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.
2. In March and April, the countryside around Ragusa bursts into bloom with a riot of colors making it a perfect time for a walking tour in eastern Sicily, when blue borage, pink valerian, and yellow margheritas grow shoulder high, and its easy to pick a bouquet of 50 different flowers!
3. In the Maremma in southern Tuscany, March brings yellow primrose and pink cyclamens in the shady woods, while late in the summer white lilies bloom on the beach at the Parco dell’Uccellina.
4. On the roadless island of Marettimo, off Sicily’s western coast, early May is the best time to see the Mediterranean scrub in bloom, when the air is scented with the perfume of rosemary, rock roses and sweet yellow broom, or near Palermo, the same flora blooms in the Zingaro Park , where you can take a dip in the turquoise sea.
5. May in Tuscany brings daisies and hyacinths in the vineyards in Chianti, while in southern Tuscany between the hill towns of Pienza and Montepulciano, the glorious green hills are painted with streaks of bright red poppies.
6. Walking in Umbria in summer brings gorgeous fields of sunflowers in the foothills above Assisi, while later in the season you’ll find cheery sunchokes – the sunflower’s wild cousin – growing to a towering height.
7. Wildflowers in the Dolomites offer a spectacular display of colors in June, July and August, with masses of buttercups, forget-me-nots and vanilla orchids. Above Cortina in the high alpine meadows, hikers will be rewarded into September with deep blue gentians, yellow alpine poppies and soft delicate edelweiss.
8. Autumn in Piedmont means truffle hunting, but don’t forget to stop and admire the clusters of brilliant yellow narcisi (sometimes called “autumn crocus,” though crocus they are not!) that pop up amongst the hazelnut groves.
9. November is off-season in Sicily, when Greek sites are full of orange calendula instead of tourists, while on the Mt. Etna volcano look for delicate saffron crocus poking through the black lava.
10. Christmas in Sicily at the seaside brings huge red poinsettias growing 12-feet high, in contrast to tiny delicate crocus blooming in the sand.