Dwarf elder

A Rose chafer (Cetonia aurata) feeds on the flowers of a Dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus). This beetle does not eat the nectar but the pollen and stamen and also other parts of the flower and even fruits. Before appearing as an adult it has lived for several years underground, in a dead trunk, or even at the bottom of a flower pot, as a fat white worm, feeding on rotten wood and compost (never on living plant parts). Despite its name the Rose chafer seems to be very fond of Dwarf elders and can be found there as long as it flowers in july and august.

The Dwarf elder forms often big groups more than a meter high on fertile soil. It is a cousin of the Common elder but is not a shrub but a perennial plant. It has the typical Elder smell, but more pungent. Frankly, when in autumn the branches die it stinks!



Often flowers and fruits are present at the same time, as can be seen here.

Maidenhair fern

A calcareous rock, a vertical surface above a pond or streamlet, even if the available sunlight is scarce, the Maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris) feels at home.

It has very thin, black stalks, and its fronds end in small, fan-like leaves.

Limestone fern

This small unobtrusive fern grows at the foot of a slope, near the edge of a wood. Its fronds of a beautiful clear green emerge from a long underground rhizome. It is a Limestone fern (Gymnocarpium robertianum).




You have really to bend down to see its finely incised fronds. If you turn a frond (carefully, it is fragile!) you notice the sores, masses of spores, in regular rows on its backside.

Greater knapweed

Greater knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) can survive in dry places. Its purple flowers contrast with the yellow grass.

Like with other members of the Daisy family (the Compositaea), what looks like a flower is in fact a flower head which contains several individual florets. Those are surrounded by a number of bracts which form an involucre. Here below those are visible as brown-edged scales under the flower head.











In Greater Knapweed all florets are tubular, those on the outside are somewhat larger. The ants enjoy!