The flora of PĂ©rigord in South-West France is abundant and diverse. In this blog you can find, in pictures, brief encounters with several hundreds of wild flowers and plants as they grow here in French Perigord. Following the seasons other species are added. An index of scientific and English names you find below on the right.

Corine Oosterlee is a botanist and photographer and she offers guided Botanical Walks and other activities around plants and vegetation in nature in Perigord. Do you want to know more? On www.baladebotanique.fr you can find more information. For Corine's photography see www.corineoosterlee.com. Both websites also in English.

Enjoy!




September 16, 2017

Burnet Saxifrage


They are everywhere now, the elegant umbels of Burnet Saxifrage (Pimpinella saxifraga). In limestone meadows and fields it flowers abundantly. It does not need a rich soil, and if it is dry and poor it is even better.







The upper parts of it are glabrous, with thin smooth stalks. There are only a few leaves on the stalks, if any, and they are deeply incised. The important leaves grow in a basal cluster at ground level. They disappear mostly when the plant flowers.






Here some basal leaves. You should think they belong to another species because they are so different, green and rather luscious. But no, it really is Burnet saxifrage.







And this is an umbel in fruit, its rays all have about the same length. Many Apiaceae - plants of the umbellifer family - have a ring of little leaves or bracts at the base of those rays, but Burnet Saxifrage has no involucre.






Autumn will arrive soon, but Burnet Saxifrage will go on flowering for a while.