Hart's Tongue Fern

The black stripes in this picture taken into the light are the spores of Hart's Tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium). They grow as a brown, velvety, mass which contains thousands of them, on the backside of the fronds.

Hart's tongue Fern doesn't like dry places, horizontal surfaces and sunlight, so it grows on slopes in the shadow of trees, often near a small stream or source.

In spring young fronds emerge from between the old ones.

Blue Lettuce

A hoverfly found something to eat in this fragile blue flower.



It's a Blue Lettuce (Lactuca perennis). It likes warm and sunny places, so you only find it on well-exposed hillsides and fields. The flowers open only when it is sunny.














The rosettes look like those of the common Dandelion, but the leaves are a bit more incised. Like those, and also like the garden lettuce it has a white latex.

The shadow of another insect.

Wild Madder

Here's another member of the family of Rubiaceae. In Perigord the Wild Madder (Rubia peregrine) grows nearly everywhere where there are trees and bushes. Here it found a fence to carelessly drape its garlands around.

The small yellow-green flowers are like stars.


















The verticillate leaves stay on in winter and disappear only in spring. Some black berries of last year have not yet been eaten by birds. No, it is not what you call a tidy plant!

Great Hedge Bedstraw

The Great Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo) grows in hedges but also on roadsides and hayfields. After mowing the grass and some rain the white clouds will re-appear.

Like other bedstraws this one has tiny, star-shaped flowers. Insects search them for nectar.


















All bedstraws and other members of the Rubiaceae-family have verticillate leaves. In the Great Hedge Bedstrow they are now hidden under the great mass of flowers, but in spring they looked like this.