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.