Now that we learned something new, we can go on!
Kornati are more or less known as the "landscape from Mars". That is, after a cursory view they may seem to have no life – but it's not like that!
Just because of such prejudice we want to talk about one of more attractive plant families, the orchids. We suppose you didn't know that such a bleak stony ground contains orchids. Nine species has been found. Maybe it doesn't seem much when we know that Croatia has 175 species, but keeping exactly that in mind, and knowing that there are numerous orchid species in the Mediterranean, we assume that more species will be found on Kornati.
Plants from the orchid family have appeared on Earth only twenty million years ago. Although it is among the youngest families of the huge plant kingdom, it already has an imposing number of species – it is thought that there are about 25 thousand species of orchids, and only 2% of the number occurs in Europe.
That multitude of forms developed through various specializations of the flower biology. For instance, some orchid species have a series of pollination processes through attracting insects by flowers that mimic the insects. The plants from the family attract our attention because they have beautiful flowers and because they are comparatively rare, so many of them are endemic and protected. The orchids are one of the largest plant families in the world. They are particularly widespread in the tropics as epiphytes (the ones you can buy in flower shops) and in the temperate climate as terrestrial plants (the ones that grow here, but don't pick them because they are typically endangered in Europe).
Let's go back to Kornati. Orchids are not easy to find here. They usually occur in small habitats (micro locations of a few square metres). The recipe for finding them is simple. Firstly, you have to know your orchids, be at the right time on the right island (out of 89), and, finally, be faster than sheep.