Kajasówka Nature Reserve
32-061 Przeginia Duchowna
Tourist region: Kraków i okolice
The reserve area covers approximately 12 hectares. At the heart of the reserve is what is known as a ‘horst’, which is a wide fault uplifted relative to the surrounding terrain. The horst consists of limestone and is approximately 2.5 kilometres long, 300 metres wide and has a height of up to 50 metres. On the southern slope of the Kajasówka Nature Reserve, thermophilic bushes of a lagging nature occur, forming a belt of scrub immediately adjacent to the forest. Blackthorn, buckthorn, hawthorn, hazel, dogwood and wild rose are dominant. Of particular natural value in the Kajasówka reserve are the thermophilous grasslands and scrubs occupying the largest areas in the central and southern parts of the reserve. These parts are very floriferous and rich in plant species, the most abundant of which are crown vetch and white swallow-wolt. On the rockier sites, cornflowers and potentilla incana are abundant. The Kajasówka massif is also home to karst phenomena involving the dissolution of rocks by surface- and groundwater. The result of these processes is an underground canal system, for example, the passageways of the Przegińska Cave and the small pond filling the karst funnel. Two nature trails have been laid out in the reserve: a red and a blue trail. The first, 5.1 kilometres long, loops around the reserve and its northern periphery. The second is, in turn, a short 100-metre access to the Przegińska Cave. One of the biggest attractions of the Kajasówka reserve is this cave, which has two openings and a corridor about 10 metres long, as well as the southern part of the path leading along the ridge.
A geological-geomorphological nature trail, mapped in 1986, leads across the Kajasówka ridge.