LELUYA/LELIJA/LELUJA

LJELJUJA, PERUNIKA, SABLJA, SABLJARKA, STRIJELKA, IRIS

Numerous and colorful (Iris is rainbow in Latin) meadow wildflower with saber-like leaves. It spends the winter as rootstock, also used for reproduction. Some species are widespread and very common, but some of them grow in very limited areas and have become endangered, e.g. Iris Croatica (Hrvatska Perunika) which grows only in the northern and northwestern Croatia. This species has big azure purple blooms with three prominent colorful stigmas on their pistil. It grows in swampy sunny forest clearings. There are also exotic cultivated species that grow in parks and gardens. The plant perunika got its name after the goddess of the sky Perunika (Perunka, Perunova, Perkunova, Perena, Gorka), wife of the old Slavic god Gromovnik (God of Thunder) Perun. This is also a name for a place hit by a Perun's spark (i.e. thunder, arrow, saber), or where a rainbow "touches" the ground. A kajkavian (Croatian dialect) version of this name is Leluja (Ljeljuja), probably inflected form of Ljelja, which is another name of this goddess. It comes as no surprise, then, that people believed that carrying a dry root of perunika plant, if dug out on the Easter night, could protect from stings and strikes