The educational trail begins with the first panel right at the entrance to Blatnická Valley, and hikers reach the last, fifth panel after three kilometers in approximately one hour at a leisurely pace.
The Veľká Fatra National Park Administration has built the Izabela Textorisová educational trail in Blatnická Valley. At five stations, visitors to the national park learn about the life and work of Slovakia’s first female botanist, after whom both a thistle she discovered and described and a planetoid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter are named.
The structure of the information board is made of Corten steel, on which a bronze plaque with text and a hand-beaten copper relief are riveted. The author of the information boards is Dominik Horský from the Black Lab studio: “At the beginning of the trail, there is a likeness of Izabela Textorisová; another relief depicts the thistle named after her and an engraving – a copy of text from a herbarium, including her signature. The third relief shows the Alpine edelweiss, and the next two boards capture views of the rock formations in Blatnická Valley.”
The texts were written by professional staff of the Veľká Fatra National Park Administration.
Touching the panels is allowed
The environment to which the metal is exposed influences the resulting color shade that the boards acquire over time. “I chose these materials so that they would naturally react in nature, meaning they would patinate. They are eternal materials that will acquire a color shade according to the environment in which they are located. When visitors touch the plaque or relief, they will naturally wear it down, and these touches will also cause the metals to patinate, giving them a unique appearance,” added the author of the educational trail boards.
Visitors to the national park are already familiar with similar information panels from the ridge of Veľká Fatra, as Dominik Horský is also the author of the panels for the educational trail between Kráľova studňa and Borišov.
A postmistress with a herbarium full of Veľká Fatra plants
Izabela Textorisová (1866–1949) was born in Ratková and acquired her first knowledge of botany from the elementary school teacher Václav Vraný. Slovakia’s first female teacher, her aunt Ľudmila Kuorková, prepared her for the teaching profession, which she briefly tried. However, under the pressure of Magyarization she left teaching, and in 1886 she passed the postal examination in Revúca and received her appointment decree as Royal Hungarian Postmistress. Until the end of her life, through various state administrations, she was head of the post office in Blatnica. When her postal duties ended, she devoted herself daily to self-study of botany and foreign languages. Andrej Kmeť also guided her toward deeper study of botany, and she maintained contacts not only with Hungarian but also with European botanists.
Izabela Textorisová’s herbarium comprises 4,878 items and is housed at the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University in Bratislava. More than half the items are her own collections, so her work today allows us to glimpse the landscape from more than a hundred years ago. Izabela Textorisová’s herbarium remains a unique testimony to the richness and diversity of the Turiec region’s flora, as since her time many components of exceptional vegetation and species diversity have disappeared, their last trace ending in her herbarium collection.
The Veľká Fatra valleys of Gaderská, Blatnická, Necpalská, and Belianska held a magnetic attraction for Izabela Textorisová. They were the nearest, most frequent, and most beloved destination of her expeditions for observing, learning, studying, and admiring plant life, and also an inexhaustible source of her working and life energy.
