The flora of Périgord in South-West France is abundant and diverse. In this blog you can find, in pictures, brief encounters with several hundreds of wild flowers and plants as they grow here in French Perigord. Following the seasons other species are added. An index of scientific and English names you find below on the right.

Corine Oosterlee is a botanist and photographer and she offers guided Botanical Walks and other activities around plants and vegetation in nature in Perigord. Do you want to know more? On www.baladebotanique.fr you can find more information. For Corine's photography see www.corineoosterlee.com. Both websites also in English.

Enjoy!




January 16, 2009

Catkins


Temperatures are just above zero, but since last week the first Hazels (Corylus avellana) are in flower. The bushes got a light yellow hue, caused by hundreds of drooping male catkins, each several centimeters long.






















Today I found some female flowers too. Mostly they start flowering about two weeks after the male flowers, maybe to avoid fertilization with pollen from the same bush. But here the lapse was much shorter.


The female flowers are tiny, consisting of only millimetre-long sticky red pistils.