Field Eryngo

Those prickly leaves that scratch your ankles while you are walking through a meadow are Field Eryngo (Eryngium campestre).


It is easy to recognise, the wax coating that protects the leaves against summer heat gives the plant its typical green-bluish hue.

It looks like a thistle, a prickly plant with flowers in heads. But no, it does not belong to the family of Asteraceae like other thistles (and the dandelion and the daisy), but to the Apiaceae. Members of this family have flowers in umbels, as you can see in wild carrots and fennel.


In the Field Eryngo the stalks under each flower have so much shortened you don't see them any more. Bracts form a ring under the flowers.

Horseshoe Vetch

In a dry and sunny spot grows Horseshoe Vetch (Hippocrepis comosa).


Early in the morning, flowers still asleep, crowned with dewdrups ...


















... and later in the day, wide awake.

Meadow Clary

The Meadow Clary (Salvia pratensis) is a sage but not one you would like to use in the kitchen; it has no fragrance. Its flowering season is nearly over now, the last stalks in bloom will soon be mowed and turned into hay together with the grass in the meadows where it grows.

This Killer Bug (Rhinocorus iracundus) lays in wait for its prey, another insect, between the flowers, and then uses its long rostrum to suck out this prey.














It seems to prefer the Meadow Clary. But why? Yes, its brilliant red goes well with the dark blue of the flower, but that's not enough of a reason. And there are not more insects to be found on Meadow Clary then on other flowers. So why?

Three grasses

With most grasses the flowering takes only a few days. Today it is difficult to find just one flowering panicle, but a week ago everywhere those yellow anthers moved in the wind.


It is Upright Brome (Bromopsis erecta), a grass growing in plenty in calcareous meadows.

To see Quaking Grass (Briza media) in flower, one also has to wait for another a year. Here a young grasshopper sits between the spikelets.













 

But the Yellow Oatgrass (Trisetum flavescens) is in full bloom. Now its delicate spikelets are rather white than yellow.
















Yesterday evening in this meadow the evening sun did bring out the colors of those tree grasses. Pink-purplish for the Quaking Grass and yellow for the Upright Brome, mixed with the silvery panicles of the Yellow Oatgrass.