Curry Plant

High temperatures in November and December incited many plants to start a second flowering. This little bush, the Curry Plant (Helichrysum stoechas), shows some yellow flower heads. Stems and leaves are greyish because they are coverd with short silky hairs.

It is a mediterranean species and it loves sunshine and drought, so in Perigord you only find it on south-exposed hillsides on calcareous soil.

Last summer's withered leaves are still visible. If you rub a flower between your hands a strong kitchen smell appears. Yes, it smells like curry!

Will the night frost stop the flowering?

Great Mullein

A kind of cabbage, those big leaves in apparent disarray?

No, they are the winter leaves of Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus). And they are not edible at all, they are covered with hairs.

An enlargement of two square centimeters of leaf surface. The rounds forms are droplets of dew and you can see the veins and also the hairs with star-like ramifications.

Leaves in a rosette at ground level. This morning they were covered in ice crystals; maybe the star-like hairs help to protect the plant against frost.

And this is what comes out of the leaves in summer. The flower stalk of Great Mullein can grow as high as one meter or more.

There are many flowers and they are yellow. They do not open in an orderly fashion frow below on the stalk to the top (or the other way round), but they start flowering somewhere in the middle, or even in several places at the same time.

Calendars 2016

   

Wild flowers and plants from Perigord at your home...

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Oxeye Daisy

At last the cold came in, but the Oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) are not that happy. A very soft month of November persuaded them to make flowers as if it were spring.

See here the result of one night below zero.

Blue Fleabane

There are still many flowers. In the soft golden light of an autumn afternoon they show at their best.

Here, Blue Fleabane (Erigeron acer) makes a spot of soft colours in a neglected grassland.

Most of the plant is done in pinks and reds and purples, only the tubular flowers in the centre of the flower heads are yellowish.

Narrowleaf Hemp-nettle

Next to French Bartsia grows a plant with really purple flowers.

There are a lot of them and they are what you call visible. Narrowleaf Hemp-nettle (Galeopsis angustifolia) is also a follower of agriculture.

It flowers after harvest between the cut cereal stalks and flowering can go on until the first frosts. If the farmer does not plough his field of course.

Seen from nearby the flower is exquisite.

French Bartsia

You need some chance to find French Bartsia (Odontites jaubertianus). It flowers only at the end of September and you can't call it exactly conspicuous. And it does not grow on the side of a walking path, it prefers less accessible spots like agricultural fields or wastelands. And when it does not have flowers, it really looks very much like other Bartsias.

It is endemic in France, it only grows here. It was thought that French Bartsia had disappeared from the Dordogne département. But no, at the boundary of a harvested field of cereals it still grows in crowds. Here a few dozens of plants, a bit hidden in the vegetation around it.

It looks very much like  Yellow Bartsia, the same rather stiff reddish stems with small opposite leaves. Maybe French Bartsia is a bit stockier. There are French Bartsias with pale yellow or salmon pink flowers, sometimes mixed with plants with darker yellow and orange tinted flowers. This is normal, French Bartsia comes in two tones.

Probably because its forebears, Yellow Bartsia and Red Bartsia, have different colours. It is an allopolyploïd. Which means that, a long time ago during hybridization, the new species kept or even doubled or quadrupled all the chromosomes of its two ancestors. We think it has the possibility to show any of those colours and that every plant 'chooses' its colour according to circumstances.

The flowers are slightly more closed than those of other Bartsia species. Also a bit hairier, but you need a looking-glass to see that.



 

Stemless Thistle

In some places, when summer is nearly over, you can find a small thistle between the low grass. The leaves are as prickly as those of bigger thistles!
The Stemless Thistle (Cirsium acaule) grows at ground level in calcareous meadows.

It is stemless...

... or nearly so.

Also visible in the picture are the fluffy seeds.

They catch the light of the evening sun.

Brazilian Waterweed

The water in the river Dordogne got warmer during this hot summer. For a number of aquatic plants this created the right circumstances for an explosion of new vegetation. Here, just above a dam, the river is calm and two different kinds of Waterweed weave their snake-like shoots.

The big snakes are shoots from Brazilian Waterweed (Egeria densa) and the small snakes are from Curly Waterweed (Lagarosiphon major). Both come from hotter parts of the world, The first one from Latin America, and the other from Southern Africa. May be they escaped from an aquarium or came along with a ship. Anyhow, now they are here and thriving. Or should you say, invading?

The shoots of Brazilian Waterweed are nearly elegant in the slightly troubled water.

And yes, it is in full bloom. The flowers float on the water surface on long thin stems. In France, Brazilian Waterweed only makes male flowers and breeds by loosing its shoots. They float with the river or are taken by ducks and swans.

Woolly Distaff-thistle

A wall of thistles in a stony field. The farmer has given up growing something here this year, the corn has not even germinated. It was too dry and too hot. He did not even worry about herbicides.

So much the better for those Woolly Distaff-thistles (Carthamus lanatus). You don't often see them in such large quantities, in fact, you nearly never see them, they are becoming very rare. They look nearly dead, but no. They are well adapted to dry circumstances, only the upper part of the plant is still green.


Nevertheless, in another field, a cereal field after harvest, grow also some plants.

Here, they are greener and still show some yellow flowers. The Woolly Distaff-thistle is very prickly, its bracts and leaves are tough and spiky, not at all soft as wool.

The seeds are rather big and they carry a crown of scales.

There are a lot of them in this stony field. Are they going to give new plants next spring, or are the voles going to eat them all?

'Beggar's Ticks Dodder'

Dodders are parasitic plants. They don't have roots nor leaves, and their thin stems garland around their host plants. And they suck the saps of those. Let's call this one 'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' (Cuscuta scandens) because it often seems to grow on Beggar's Ticks (Bidens frondosa).

It is considered as an invasive plant, like the plant it has chosen to grow on here, for that matter. The Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), with its big leaves is a serious pest in many parts of France.'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' is still quite uncommon in Perigord, but its numbers are increasing. It grows in some places on the Dordogne banks, and the river helps it to go elsewhere.

Many little white flowers will give many round seeds.

St Bernard Lily

A white cloud under the Pine trees...

Thousands of little white flowers open now. The St Bernards Lily (Anthericum ramosum) is in full bloom. They are not always so many, quite often you find only a few plants together.

It is a bulbous plant, with thin stems, grassy leaves and delicate flowers.

It is not really a Lily but looks much like it. At least, it has a bulb and six petals and parallel-nerved leaves.

'Truncate Selfheal'

There are not that many flowers in chestnut woods, but sometimes there are.  Here, among the green leaves of very young trees a Selfheal. It has no English name, so let us call it 'Truncate Selfheal' (Prunella hastifolia).

It is difficult to see in the image, but in fact it has truncate leaves.

However, the big blue flowers do like some sunshine. This one grows in an open space between the trees.

Broadleaf Helleborine

You easily miss it. Even if it is a rather big plant, until 80 cm high. Broadleaf Helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) blends well into its environment, it grows in the shade of trees and has rather inconspicuous colours.

But it is a beauty, when you look from nearby!

Every plant is different, even if the flowers are always some shade of green, red and purple with a touch of yellow.


It flowers from the second half of June to well into July. This year it will not go on flowering for long, it is too hot and too dry.

Stiff Hedgenettle

In the last rays of the evening sun, on a dry grassy hillside.

The Stiff Hedgenettle (Stachys recta) is a member of the Lamiaceae family thart grows in meadows and fields on calcareous soil. Like most plants of this family it has an angular stem en opposed leaves.

If you look from nearby, you can see its little flowers have an intricate design, creamy white with a pattern of dark red stripes and dots. The stamina under the upper lip spread like open arms to receive pollinisating insects.

Mountain Germander

This very low bush grows on a stony and dry hillside at ground level.

The branches of Mountain Germander (Teucrium montanum) are like glued to the soil.

In June it flowers with clumps of creamy-coloured flowers, Like other germenders they have a big lower lip, but no upper lip. The stamina jut out from the flower.

A tragedy

In most flowers, pollen is a kind of fine dust. If an insect comes along it will be powdered by it, and thus it can carry it to another flower to pollinize it.

In orchids you can find in every flower two polliniums shaped like little clubs. On one side of each pollinium there is pollen, on the other side a kind of glue. When an insect visits the flower, the pollinium detaches itself from the flower and sticks to the insect's head. Right on spot. The insects continues with one or two protrusions on its head. When it forages on another flower, the end of the club with pollen touches its stigma and it will be pollinized. If everything goes well.

See here a small butterfly, a Meadow Fritillary (Mellicta parthenoides) on a Pyramidal orchid (Orchis pyramidalis) in soft evening light. Yes, it is beautiful!

But it does not move at all! Is it asleep? No, it is exhausted, maybe starving amidst flowers full of nectar.

After a while it starts to move a bit and it tries to enter its proboscis in a flower. The nectar is hidden deep in a long and narrow spur. He can't get in, there are obstacles on its proboscis, it has become too large to be used.


Orchid polliniums are sticking on the proboscis and make it impossible to put it into the spur and get to the nectar. In the pictures they are visible like small yellow and violet objects.

The butterfly tries to get rid of the polliniums, it rubs one of its legs against them. In vain, the glue is too strong.

 Another try. No, it does not work.

It has no more energy to go on. It can't even fold its proboscis in the right way. Is it going to survive? No, if the glue does not unstick, this butterfly will die from hunger, thirst and exhaustion.

You can not help it with tweezers, it is too delicate. And you can't take wild butterflies to the vet. No, impossible.