Annual Bluegrass

Annual Bluegrass (Poa annua) grows nearly everywhere and it flowers nearly all year round.

It is tiny so you have to look near your feet to see it. It is what you call an ordinary grass and it likes human presence where. It grows on sidewalks, between the pavement of a road, in forgotten corners of gardens and towns, around abandoned buildings, on walking paths. And also elsewhere.

The flowering stalks come out of a bunch of disorderly green leaves; those are slightly folded lengthwise.

Here, early in the morning, the flowers begin to open.

The small spikelets covered in dewdrops when opening, look more like a work of abstract art than like an inflorescence. The glumes, the small scarious scales that protect the spikelets are pink in this plant, bur often the plant is completely green, flowers included. Rhe stamens begin to get out, after a few hours they will release pollen in the wind.

Green Hellebore

The color of the Green hellebore (Helleborus viridis) justifies its name, it is really of an intense dark, green, green and you can see it when other plants do not yet show many green sprouts.

It makes big clumps on the forest floor at the end of winter.

Even the flowers are green, little bells hanging between big compound palmate leaves.

When wide open, you can see about twenty stamens and in their centre some pistils a bit longer.

Green Hellebore, here beside a fallen Hornbeam tree, looks very much like the other hellebore that grows in Dordogne, Stinking Hellebore, with paler flowers and a really bad smell. Green Hellebore is not as common as this species, you'll find it only in the deepest parts of valleys, under trees, and mostly not far from water.

Lawn Daisy

Everywhere on lawns and also elsewhere, Lawn Daisy (Bellis perennis).

Little radiant suns, a circle of pink-tipped ligulate flowers around a golden heart of tubular flowers.

A stem with a single flowerhead with typical hairs on the bracts.

And this stem comes out of a small basal cluster of leaves flat on the soil. Hoarfrost? No problem at all!

A bit of cold does not matter. The flower simply closes.

Here the flower in the rays of an end of the afternoon sun, beginning to close for the night.