Dandelion

In well-protected spot the first dandelions (Taraxacum sp.) show their yellow faces.

A ray of sunshine makes it happen, even if it is cold.






Here they brighten up an old open-air washing place.

Dandelions are not specuies like other plants. It is difficult to decide of which species the genus Taraxacum is made. Often Dandelions reproduce in an agamosperm way, this means that new plants grow from seeds that come from unfertilized oocytes, so they are clones from a mother plant. It can be that a whole population is descended from a single plant, so it is rather an asexual line than a species. If we considered every line as a species, there would be hundreds or even thousands of dandelion species. Another complication: some plants show sexual reproduction and it is possible to find hybrids next to lines.

For practical reasons, lines that resemble each other are grouped into sections.





Big chance the flowers in this picture are Taraxacum fasciatum, a line that is part of the  Ruderalia, the most common section in Dordogne.

Blow!






If you look from nearby, you see the spiny tops of the seeds. Their colour varies with line/species.

Stinging Nettle

Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) are robust plants. They went on growing all winter notwithstanding rain, snow and frost and now they look a bit crumpled, but no more than that.





The Stinging Nettle likes nitrogen, so you can find him in many places where humans altered the soil and also in places where there is a natural supply of this stuff. Wastelands, vacant plots, abandoned compost and manure, gardens, riversides...






They sting but nevertheless they are beautiful with this frosty edge.






Stinging Nettles are dioecious, that means that male and female flowers do not grow on the same plant. Here is one with female flowers already in fruit. Seeds can rest for a very long time in the soil and await the right moment to germinate, which helps to explain the resilience of Stinging Nettles.





A butterfly, The Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae), deposits its eggs on them. Many small caterpillars feed on leaves and flowers.





Who is looking? Maybe he looks menacing but he is a strict vegetarian...

Rosettes

After a rather warm month of January, rosettes of wild orchids develop well. Roots or tubercules of Orchids from here hibernate in the soil. Many species show their first leaves long before the flowering stalks appear, at the end of winter. Often many kleaves have already disappeared when the plant flowers.






Under an oak tree on the roadside this rosette is really on show. It is rather big and belongs to a Fly Orchid (Orchis insectifera), an orchid that is not rare at all on limestone soil in Perigord.






In May, when it flowers, it is more difficult to find a Fly Orchid amidst other green plants,  its little black flowers are not that conspicuous. And yes, in fact they look really like a fly, antennae and wings included.






In this limestone meadow many orchids flower later in the year. Here the rosettes from the two species that are very abundant here. From the three rosettes with greyish and roundish leaves will grow the flower stalks of the Western Spider Orchid (Ophrys occidentalis). The rosette with long, curved green leaves is a Green-winged Orchid that begins to flower two weeks later.





The Western Spider Orchidis about ten to twenty centimeters high. This one just begins flowering and it is still very small.






A budding Green-winged Orchid.