Hawkweed Oxtongue

Some spider webs, a row of yellow flowers.

An abandoned field colored yellow and white as you can find nearly everywhere. Two very common plant species flowering from the end of summer until the first frost, and even after. Between the white umbels of Wild Carrots (Daucus carota) you see the yellow flower heads of Hawkweed Oxtongue (Picris hieracioides).










No, it is not a Hawkweed, (a plant of the same family with also yellow flowers) nor an Oxtongue (a succulent greenhouse plant). The yellow flowers are of the same type as a dandelion, composed of some tens of ligulate flowers.













Like dandelions the ripe fruits carry little fluffy parasols that fly in the winds.

Cut-Leaved Germander

Since nearly a year this field full of Wild Carrots (Daucus carota) is a truffle field. Last winter the farmer planted young oak trees grafted with mycelium of the precious truffle mushroom. To protect the young trees from hungry roe and deer he covered them in plastic webbing. Long ago, when Perigord still was a wine region, the field has been a vineyard, and later on tobacco was grown on it, until the seventies or eighties of last century. And after that, the field has been left fallow and was overgrown with junipers for years.


The farmer has cleaned up and plowed and the seeds, hidden in the earth for long years, came to the surface. They are the seeds of 'weeds' that grew in the vineyards and tobacco fields, sometimes species that became rare since. Now they found a soil loose enough to germinate.











For this reason you can find exceptional annual 'weeds' in this new truffle field. Like this small Cut-Leaved Germander (Teucrium botrys) with laciniated slightly velvety leaves.














This one has no upper lip and its stamina stick out, just like other gamanders

Creeping Germander

A long summer without any rain gives dry meadows and open spaces a burned look. There are virtually no green leaves. The Creeping Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys) is used to this. By preference it grows in a sunny spot on porous calcareous soil that does not retain much rain water. It has already finished flowering and the brown calices are still on the plant.


But some pink flowers can still be found. The flower has no upper lip, so the stamina are pointing upwards in the open.

The tiny leaves look like rather stylized miniature oak-leaves.

Woolly Thistle

On uncultivated land overgrown by white Wild Carrots and yellow Hawkweed Oxtongue a marvelous plant shows its colours. It is a Woolly Thistle (Cirsium eriophorum) nearly two meters high.

It needed two years to grow so big. The first year the plant made a leaf rosette at ground level, with a long root that penetrates deep into the soil to enable the plant to find water, even in a dry summer like this year. The big three-dimensional leaves are deeply divided and have soft prickles that go above or below the leaf surface.

The second year the thistle made a stem and flowers. Every flower head contains dozens of small tubular purple flowers. The flower head consists of bracts that are connected by a kind of woolly fleece, or better, a fabric like a  thick spider web. In the picture a small green bug and a whole family of blackish-brown beetles visit the flowers.

Musk Thistle

This year meadows and fallow fields are indeed beautiful! Many wild flowers thrived after the rains of May and June and are abundant, and very often also taller than other years. Like this Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) with pink-purple flowers, here photographied in a field left fallow for two years.

The undersides of its prickly leaved are covered in a spider-web like tissue, and the flowerhead sits in an involucre with also spider-web threads between its prickly points.

Rough Marsh-Mallow

No, this small Mallow does not grow in marshes. The Rough Marsh-Mallow (Althaea hirsuta) prefers dry meadows on poor soil. It is small and unconspicuous compared to the larger flowers that surround it.


All mallows have below the pink petals a calyx that sits on a kind of deep dish with star-shaped points. The Rough Marsh-mallow has straight hairs on its stem.

Difficult to believe that this tiny plant belongs to the same family as the lime tree. But the red and black firebugs know, they prefer to feed on all kinds of Malvaceae.

Viper's Bugloss

A field full of colours. The blue flowers on long stalks forming large groups are Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare). A 'weed' that grows nearly everywhere, in abandoned fields, roadsides, amidst garden  and other garbage, even in vegetable gardens. If the sunny weather continues and turns into a period of drought, the Viper's bugloss does not die but will go on flowering. You can pick them and put them in a vase; they keep well.

Like many other plants from the Borinagaceae family, leaves and stem, in fact all green parts of the Viper's bugloss, are covered with rough reddish hairs.

Fly Orchid

Another plant that merges into its surroundings is the Fly Orchid (Ophrys insectifera). It is an orchid with unconspicuous tiny brown flowers. It grows in open spaces in woods on dry, poor soil where you can find it between small oaks and junipers.
 

But some insects know very well how to find it. The flowers look like a fly or bee, with even antennae. And they smell good to those insects because they secrete pheromone-like substances.

But some insects know very well how to find it. The flowers look like a fly or bee, with even antennae. And they smell good to those insects because they secrete pheromone-like substances.

Grass Pea

Heavy rain this month of May made the grass grow. The Grass Pea (Lathyrus sphaericus) is hiding itself between the long stalks. Even if its small flowers are of a fluorescent orange colour, you really have to look for it to find it. The plant is tiny, and its elangated stems and leaves make it merge in the surrounding vegetation.


You can find it in limestone meadows where the farmer did not use too much fertilizer, or even in abandoned fields.

Early Forget-me-not

In the same place as Grey Mouse-ear grow many small blue flowers, also annuals with a short life-cycle. The Early Forget-me-not (Myosotis ramosissima) is the smallest of all forget-me-nots, the plants are not larger than five centimeters high.

Grey Mouse-ear

In a dry meadow there are always some places where the grass does not grow. But Grey Mouse-ear (Cerastium brachypetalum) does, in large quantities. It is an annual plant with a short life-cycle, in one or two weeks the green stems in the image will be dry and yellow and the plant dies.

Yellow Anemone

Here is another Anemone. Except for its color it looks much like a Wood anemone, but it is a bit larger and flowers a bit later. The Yellow Anemone (Anemone ranunculoides) prefers  woods and a moist soil.


It is not easy to find one because it is a rare species in this region.


















Here is one that grows besides a small stream, the water reflects the blue sky. The image shows clearly the involucre.

Wood Anemone

From the beginning of April little white flowers cover the woodfloor. The Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa) is in full bloom. This plant prefers slightly acid soils in deciduous forests. Here, small insects search for food among the many yellow stamen.


In anemones, every stem carries a flower, and lower on this stem a whorl of bracts, the involucre.

The plants looks a bit like a buttercup, leaves and flowers are alike. Yes, it belongs to the same family of Ranunculaceae.

True Oxlip

Primroses grow everywhere, but this one, the True Oxlip (Primula eliator) is a bit less common. Sometimes you can find its pale yellow flowers on long stems near a small stream, under trees.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax

Nearly all year round it has some purple flowers, but now the Ivy-leaved Toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis) is in full bloom. It is rooted in cracks in a rock or an old stone wall or another vertical surface, often not far away from water.


Here it grows on a rock above a moist place, but good places to look for it are also on the walls of an old wash-house or a mill-race, or on a wall beside a stream.

The purple flowers, with two yellow protrusions on the lower lip, are easy to recognize.

White violets

This is the right time of the year to look for small violets. Normally they are blue, but sometimes you find white ones. Yes, this happens, sometimes a Sweet violet has flowers that are white instead of blue (see also Spring violets). But the plant here below grows on dry and loamy soil, in the midst of a not frequently used track in a hornbeam-oak forest. It is the typical habitat of another species, the White Violet (Viola alba).


Small morphological details also show it is a species on its own. But you need a magnifying glass to see them.

Two metres away on the same track grows a variety of the White Violet with darker leaves and a purple spur. Let us call it the Dark-leaved Violet (Viola alba ssp scotophylla).












In the foreground you notice some purple-veined leaves of last year. Under the flower new leaves are developing.

Inundations

After lots of rain this winter little streamlets are brimming over, and this small wooded valley is completely inundated.

The new white-speckled leaves of the Italian Arum (Arum italicum) are flooded.

And also the Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis).
















But all will survive, in a few days or weeks the water will retire and everything goes back to normal.

Common Primrose

The first one of this year! In Trémolat, on a rather steep hill. It is really early, this Common Primrose (Primula vulgaris).

Red Deadnettle

In flower in January: the Red Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum). It is a little annual plant that grows in vegetable gardens and in corn fields out of crop.

And also elsewhere, in a stack of wood.

Or next to a pile of rocks.


















All plants of the Lamiaceae family have foursquare stems, opposite leaves and flowers with a speckled lower lip.

Cowslip

Among fallen Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) leaves...

...in six weeks the Cowslip (Primula veris) will flower!