Description

It starts from Corno Valley, with a plain of fluvial-lucustrine deposits, at the gates of Cascia. From here one can completely retrace the valley until the foot of Alvagnano Mountain, near the small village of Civita.

Maltignano Valley presents sharply different features: the final section, from Maltignano to Cascia, is wide and flat, well leveled thanks to lake and river deposits; the name Padule recalls recent episodes of marsh and stagnation of water (with environmental related phenomenons), now definitively reclaimed.

Sides are gently sloping, the quite narrow access would not induce to suppose the existence of this large plain. The ancient forest vegetation has been cleared until the slopes of reliefs; today Maltignano Valley, in this last section, is a wide extent of meadows, fields, pastures, grasslands, dotted with almond trees and oaks, with groves on highest borders. Rows of oak trees, lanes enclosed by hedges of hawthorn, blackthorn and field maple, thick oak forests, surrounding the plane at the foot of the hill, complete the picture; shrikes, thrushes, quails, partridges, hares inhabit this optimal environment; the long-tailed magpie, colorful corvids, white, black and iridescent, finds here one of its few habitats in this area.

By night, during the appropriate season, the boar comes down from the surrounding forested massifs, looking for pastures in Maltignano plain.