Maidenhair Spleenwort

In a wood on a steep Northern slope grow Oaks and Beeches that nearly never see the sun. Hidden between the trees, high above the river Dordogne there are some limestone cliffs. Here grows this little fern.

It is a Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes), but which one? In Dordogne there are three subspecies known, and this one is rather atypical.

Generally, Maidenhair Spleenworts grow on stone walls or vertical rocks, like here. They all have fronds with a dark brown  central stem, the rachis, that is pinnate compound, with on both sides small simple green leaves.





Here a Common Maidenhair Spleenwort as can be found in many places: Asplenium trichomanes subsp. quadrivalens. It has rather long fronds tapering towards the end, with symmetrical pinnate leaves that are finely dented.

The subspecies here below grows mainly on vertical limestone rocks, like cliffs or cave entrances.

This Maidenhair Spleenwort  (Asplenium trichomanes subsp. pachyrachis) is much less common, already because the right kind of vertical limestone rock is not everywhere, not even in Perigord. It is tiny and its fronds follow the rock surface as if they are glued to it. The pinnate leaves cover each other like roof tiles.


But this fern? It looks a bit like the subspecies above, but...

It has rather long pinnate leaves lobed like little hands that do not cover each other like roof tiles. And the end leaf is at least twice as big as the others. The fronds are free from the rock, not glued to it, and they heve everywhere the same width instead of tapering. It does not look like a Perigordian subspecies, it looks more like a subspecies that grows exclusively in the Alps. Quite improbable to find that one here...

Moreover, when you look at the underside of a fertile frond as in the centre of the image here below, you see is has not many sores. The sores are the whitish small structures wherein sporangia (here tiny black points) develop. Are there fertile spores in those sporangia? Now way to know without a microscope.






Hybrid plants are sometimes less fertile than pure species. Is it possible this plant is a hybrid, and in case of yes, between which species or subspecies?

Maybe yes. We do not know yet very well the Spleenworts and their subdivisions and how species and subspecies can be distinguished and how they differ. They are tiny plants, often rather inconspicuous and growing in places difficult to get to. Not easy for botanists.

'Holy Hawksbeard'

In this graveyard there are not only the faded chrysanthemums of last month. Near a tomb slmall yellow flowers are opening themselves to the December sun.






This Hawksbeard has no official English name, so let us call it 'Holy Hawksbeard'(Crepis sancta subsp. nemausensis). It is a little Asteraceae that normally flowers in Mediterranean regions at the end of winter or the beginning of spring. The last years it is seen more and more North of its area, and now it is common in Dordogne. But to see it in flower in December is really exceptional.

It does not grow only in cemeteries, also in vineyards, gardens, and trodden places in towns.

Its little rosettes are visible a long time before the flowers appear. Here they are surrounded by at least eight other plant species; the blue-green rosette is from a Prickly Sow-Thistle (Sonchus asper).







To open up the flowers need sunshine.

Sweet Chestnut (2)

The Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) has beautiful leaves, long and regular and very green.





In October they fall, a bit before the leaves of most Oaks. At least in a normal year, this year there will be leaves on the trees around christmas!






Sweet Chestnut leaves are dented, and every dent has a fine point. Decomposition by fungi and bacteria creates little black spots on the leaves.

Many Sweet Chestnut trees end their lives when they are still rather young. To make fence posts you don't need a big diameter. Chestnut wood is nearly imputrescent and is for this reason long lasting. In former times it was used also for stakes in vineyard and to make hoops for barrels.






Many Sweet Chestnut woods in Dordogne were coppiced. Regrowth after felling gives after ten or fifteen years bunches of not too big trunks.







You can see the trees are not in very good health, Sweet Chestive are sensitive to all kinds of diseases, bleeding cancer and others.





This tree is old, planted maybe eighty or sixry years ago. It is surrounded by its progeniture.

Sweet Chestnut (1)

Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) is a typical Perigordin tree. It grows everywhere where the soil is not limestone. Today's Chestnut woods are the descendants of former Sweet Chestnut forests planted for their fruits and wood. People, especially the poor, harvested chestnuts for flour. This very big trunk here below is what is left from a tree planted long ago, it is dying from old age now.






Don't worry, new trees begin to grow at the feet of this Methusalem.

Here, in June, a Sweet Chestnut wood in flower. Fluffy bunches of male catkins give the trees a festive look.





The male flowers in long catkins produce masses of pollen which the wind brings everywhere. There is a dusty smell in the air. The female flowers are very tiny and you don't notice them when you don't look from nearby.





Chestnut season is October. The burrs, with their nasty spikes that protect them against hungry intruders, open up when the fruits inside are ripe.






And now the feast can begin. Wild boar, badgers, mice, jays and other animals adore chestnuts and now they eat and eat and eat until they just can't anymore. They cannot eat everything, the tree has let loose all its fruits at once en there is too much food. So the tree can be sure at last some chestnuts remain un-eaten and can germinate.






Here, a mouse had its dinner, and a little slug takes care of the leftovers.

True Service Tree

A walking path is already covered in fallen leaves; amongst them some strange fruits like little apples with a dull skin. You can try to eat them, but you get a strange feeling on your tongue. They are edible, the fruits of the True Service Tree (Sorbus domestica), but you have to wait until they begin to rot and the adstringent taste disappears. Like them or not, at least they are sweet.






When you look upwards in the spot you see pinnate leaves on rather thin branches where the fruits come from. They are no longer there, they have fallen already. The leaves are beginning to turn.






From green to yellow to brown. In the picture below, it is already November.

The True Service Tree is a tree, often small, and it can be a bit lost between the Oaks, Hornbeams, Maples, Sweet Chestnuts and other trees from the Perigordine woods. They are not uncommon bit normally you find only a few trees here and there between the other species; a True Service Tree forest does not exist.





The bark is smooth on young trees, but when it grows older it becomes fissured.






This was summer...

Marsh Scullcap

This little plant grows in places where the soil is wet and disturbed by let's say tractors or wild boar. It is rather common and flowers at the end of summer, sometimes in large amounts. It even grows in corn fields, if there has been enough rain.

Apparently it can grow even when herbicides applied in spring have done their work.






Marsh Scullcap (Scutellaria galericulata) is an at first sight rather inconspicuous member of the Mint (Lamiaceae) family. It is not even aromatic, like most other Mints.







Flowers always appear two by two. In the picture the 'scullcap' is clearly visible; a kind of helmet-like protrusion on the calyx. What function does it have? No idea.






Here a well-developed plant, new square branches are developing above the leaves of the main stem. And how pretty are the flowers!

Guelder Rose

It is berry season, and this year there is a lot to eat for the birds.





As, for an exemple, the fruits of the Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus). Its boughs bend over under their weight. The berries come in bunches and they are round, shiny, slightly transparent drupes.






A ray of sunshine embellishes them still more. The leaves, lobed like Maple leaves, already begin to change into autumn colour.






The flowers also are not to be overlooked. They appear in May. The small flowers in the centre of the corymb are fertile, the larger ones on the outside are not. They make the flowering more visible to insects.






Guelder Rose is a bush that grows on humid soils. Here they screen a small stream from our view.

Marsh Fern

Most ferns need humid surrounding to feel at ease and the Marsh Fern (Thelypteris palustris) still more than most other ferns. This beautiful plant is rather uncommon, probably because its prefered habitats, marshlands and wetlands, get more and more scarce.






Here it grows in a wet meadow besides a small stream, nearly hidden between Irises and Sedges. Its roots spread and its fronds grow everywhere.






They are a beautiful tender green and subtly pinnate.






Fertile fronds are somewhat larger. Edges of the pinnules are curled around masses of dark spores.






No, a bit of an inundation is not a problem. In spring, when all streams and ponds overflow, its new fronds just go on unfirling towards the light.

Wild Angelica

The large umbels of Wild Angelica (Angelica sylvestris) show off in this poplar plantation near a small stream. In a good year this majestic plant can grow easily two metrres high. Here the soil is wet enough and this spring there was a lot of rain, so everything goes well for Wild Angelica.

Look at details of this plant, it is worthwhile.





Every umbel has two dozens of little umbels on stalks that grow out of the central axis, and every little umbel in its turn has dozens of creamy flowers on still smaller stalks that grow out of the center of those small umbels. The stamina are much longer as the petals and protrude invitingly towards passing insects. A big Rose Chafer (Cetonia aurata) took to it, it does not eat just the stamina but also the rest of the flowers.


Here below some leaf sheaths in spring.





Above right the sheath ends into three leaf stems. The sheat to the left is thick and rounded because it still contains the buds of the new flowering stem that will grow out of it soon. And there is a beautiful pattern of hairs, ridges and coloured nerfs.






At the end of summer leaves are often a bit worn down. The weather, insects and diseases did some damage. Leaves are pinnate and have fine dents.

Visible parts of the plant die in winter, but brown round stalks stay around intil spring. Not much is left from the umbels, but some seeds still adhere to them.

Perforate Saint-John's-wort

Perforate Saint-John's-wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a real summer plant. Right now its yellow flowers are nearly everywhere. Roafdsides, abandoned yards, cultivated fields, gardens, forest edges, even in town. It does not especially prefer certain kinds of soil and it can withstand a lot of summer drought. 

Sometimes there are only a few plants, sometimes Saint-John's-wort grows in large colonies, as here in an field left fallow this year.

Every flower has five petals, in the midst of them a paintbrush of stamina. On the rim of the petals there are tiny black spots. Those are glands and they are typical for Saint-John's-worts, nearly all species have them, not only on petals but also on green parts of the plant. 

The stems have many branches and every branch has flowers. There are small, longish leaves.

After flowering and fructification the dead stems do not disappear at once. They turn a reddish brown or nearly black colour. Beautiful with some hoarfrost!

Creeping Thistle

A July morning, just after sunrise, in a fallow field.






The first sun rays lighten up the stalks of all plants here. Most of them are Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense) with its white silky heads, and there is also Common Andryala (Andryala integrifolia) with its much smaller yellow flowerheads, still closed at this time of the day.






Some weeks ago it was like this, the Thistles still in full bloom with lilac flowers, and here and there an Andryala. Creeping Thistle is a perennial plant and it can appear in large amounts when circumstances are what they should be. A good soil, not much competition from other plants, laboured but not too recently so last year's plants can develop and spread.





At the lower part of the stem prickly leaves make you don(t want to touch the Creeping Thistle, but upwards the oval flowerheads sit on stems without any thorns. Insects love them. Most common thistle species belong to two genera, Carduus and Cirsium. Species from the first genus have simple pappus hairs without ramifications on their fruits, the pappus hairs of the last genus are like a feather, with ramifications. Well, it is a detail and not easy to see.







Now flowering is over, and the fruits are nearly ripe and ready to fly away.

Bird's Foot Trefoil

If you make a walk in summer you cannot avoid meeting Bird's Foot Trefoil ( (Lotus corniculatus).

 
Here, besides a path between fields left fallow this year it grows abundantly.

 
Hundreds of flowerheads with  butterfly-shaped flowers grow here.

During the day the flowers are turned upwards, but when night falls, they fold downwards. Here, early in the morning when there are still dewdrops around, they are asleep. As the fly seems to be also, it does not look that much awake.

 
Bird's Foot Tréfoil is very variable. There are plants with oval leaves and more or less horizontal branches, and other plants with straight leaves and vertical stems.

There are nearly always some orange flowers between the yellow ones.

 

Now the fruits are developing. They are long straight cylindrical pods, yes, a bit like bird's feet, including nails!