Spotted Rockrose

Some cyclopic objects look at us.

They are petals fallen from a Spotted Rockrose (Tuberaria guttata).

It is a transient flowering. You can look for Spotted Rockrose and not find it, and yet a week later it is there in multitude.

Its favorite habitat is sandy and subnny and not on limestone soil. Here, in a poor meadow after haymaking it grows abundantly.

Many-seeded Slender Tare

This is a very tiny vetch, after flowering it is nearly invisible, unless you really look for it in a calcareous meadow. Many-seeded Slender Tare (Ervum gracile) has a rather long name for such a small plant. 

With some difficuly you can see it is infested by aphids. There were three or two flowers on every flower stalk but only one developed into a seed pod. In this species often the flowerstalk ends in a little point above the flowers or pods.


Two weeks ago it was still in full bloom, with slender curved tendrils.

Now the pods develop. They are a bit transparent and you can see there is a row of several seeds, yes, it is many-seeded for such a small vetch.

 

Dewdrups glisten in the morning sun on leaves, tendrils and seedpods.

 

 

 

Yellow Vetch

In a flowering meadow grows this Yellow Vetch (Vicia lutea) in large amounts. In fact it is not yellow at all, its flowers are white. It has tendrils to climb sunwards in grasses and other plants.

You can see there are many insect visitors. Like many other vetches it has black spots on its stipules. Those spots contain a sugary substance attractive to insects, especially ants.

Also Red Soldier Beetles (Rhagonycha fulva) are fond of Yellow Vetch. Many of them gather on it to meet a partner to mate.

Talking about nuptials, between the flower also hides a male Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis) and he carries a parcel between its legs, his wedding present.

He is looking for a female to bring her a prey wrapped in silk. If he comes without a gift, she will eat him immediately without giving him time to make love to her. The present will keep her occupied while he couples with her, and with some luck he will get away with it !

Two vetches

The first thing you see of Coronille minima is its colour. This is what you call yellow! This vetch is a mediterranean species and it has no English name.

It is a perennal plant that grows in dense clumps covered with yellow flower crowns. This year they are bigger as usual, it has rained so much that even in the arid places it prefers it grew bigger and bigger.

You nearly cannot see the leaves, there are so many flower heads! Every leaf consists of about a dozen small folioles, and they are thick, as if they are cut from a sheet of handicraft foam.

Apparently the same type of foam has been used to cut the leaves of another Coronilla, the Scorpion Vetch (Coronilla scorpioides) here below. They are the same greyish-green, but bigger and more irregular.

Its flowers are small and its fruits are long. In fact they look very much like a scorpions tail.

Here it grows in a cultivated field, but you can meet it also in a dry calcareous meadow.