'Mountain Needle Sunrose'

The weather is really hot, the sun burns and scorches, plants turn yellow and brown.

Here a 'Mountain Needle Sunrose' (Fumana ericifolia, no English name known) begins to take autumn colours. This very small bush grows at ground level in sunny meadows and other open areas on limestone soil. In spite of the mountain in its name it prefers lowland or hills.

Now there are many rust-coloured fruits, with here and there still a flower.

To see the flowers you should start early, the flowering of this tiny Rochrose is ephemeral and after only a few hours the petals fall.

There exist other Needle Sunroses, but with this one the flowers have long pedicles that bow down after flowering.

Lamarck's Bedstraw

Lamarck's Bedstraw (Galium divaricatum) is too subtle to be seen easily. You look through a cloud of thin stems and very tiny fruits and what you see is essentially the grass that grows behind it. With a camera it is a bit more easy, you focus on the plant and the vegetation around disappears in an out-of-focus blurry.

It is a real Bedstraw, chaotic stems growing in every direction without any regard for the laws of gravitation. You don't know where the plant begins or where it ends.

The square stems have some verticillated leaves at the nodes. Very tiny course hairs give it a rough and scabrous feel when touched.

Concerning the flowers, they exist but you need a magnifying glass to see them, a flower measures half a millimeter maximum. A small reddish or pink bump on the young fruits, that's all. In theory they are star-shaped with four points, like other bedstaws, but this is theory as long as you can't see.

After flowering, the flowers at least respect gravity's laws, the small fruits hang down on short peducules, and this distinguishes Lamarck's Bedstaw from a near relation among bedstraws. Rather subtle, also...