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!




October 24, 2018

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...