Take care! They stick!
In your socks, on dog's hairs, on other plants, on your jeans... And if you try to have a look from nearby, they also attach themselves to you pullover or even your hairs. And it is not easy at all to get rid of them.
Those small rounded seeds have small spines, and every spine ends in five very tiny hooks, just visible in the picture. This is really good natural velcro!
Gypsyflower (
Cynoglossum officinalis)
is very unusual in Dordogne, so you don't risk to meet and touch it by chance. It grows in uncultivated lands if they are not too poor, and it needs warmth and sunshine. Now, in winter there are only dead stalks with the fruits that are left because no victim approached them. And, here and there, a rosette of leaves. It is a bi-annual plant, the rosettes of one year produce flowers the year after.
The flowers are wine red or purple, often with visible veins, and they open in summer (rarely again in october, like in this picture).
