American Box-Elder

Torrential rains from the last week made the waters of the Dordogne rise and the trees on its banks now get wet feet.





No problem for the big American Box-Elder (Acer negundo) on the left in the image, it is made for this. It is a kind of Maple tree but a special one, a native of North America and now really at home on the banks of big rivers here where it can develop into dense forests.





In autumn the leaves turn yellow. They are composite, a bit like Elder leaves, instead of simple and hand-shaped like other Maples.

Water Mint

Nearly all year round you can find Mint leaves. Only when it really freezes they disappear. Here a big bunch of Water Mint (Mentha aquatica) growing on the bank of a stream.





Flowers have disappeared, or nearly, at this time of the year.





They grow in little mauve balls on top of the stems and also at the base of opposite leaves below it.





The plant has a mild mint scent that comes out when you walk over it. At least the leaves, the flowers smell subtly of honey.





In summer it is easy to find large many-stemmed tufts of Water Mint in wet meadows. Yes, butterflies love them.

Hazel

This is a Hazel (Corylus avellana) bush during a summer shower.

 

Now leaves should be falling, but this year they don't fall that much. To turn yellow or red and to detach themselves from the branches, they need some cold days or nights. Well, this autumn is too warm, so there is still a lot of green in the forest.




Those Hazel leaves, oval shaped, dented, with visible veins and a typical little point at the end, got paler, but just a little bit.




There are individual differences between bushes, all the same. Under a Hazel a bit further on there are already a lot of fallen leaves.

In some weeks there will be nothing but naked boughs.





An old Hazel bush looks like a big bunch of trunks and branches that come out of the ground at roughly the same spot; when the oldest of them die, new shoots develop near them.

Hornbeam

Some fallen leaves in a Hornbeam wood.




But normally leaves of Hornbeams (Carpinus betulus) turn yellow in autumn, isn't it? It seems this is not always true.




Confirmed when we look upwards. Two Hornbeam trees wit reddish leaves. Exceptions to the rule exist.

Tree Lungwort

On a tree trunk grow salad-green leave-like structures. At least, in this wet autimn they are clear gree, when it is dry they will turn brownish. They are from a lichens called Tree Lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria), one of the biggest lichens of France.





Its thallus (the "leaf"), a long, lobed shape more or less hanging can get until 40 cm long. Here, the thalli are much shorter. If you look from nearby you see the thalli have different colours and shapes.





The lichen is a slow grower, and there are younger and older thallu present on the same tree.





Their surface is reticulated and on the ridges grow little soredia, here visible as a kind of grey-green powdery stuff. Soredia assume the vegetative reproduction of the lichen, they contain samples of the ascomycete and the cyanobacter that live together as a lichen, and that can move on towards another tree.






Tree Lungwort is an organism of older forests with old deciduous trees, in Dordogne Oaks and Hornbeams. Because it is sensitive to certain kinds of air polution, notably sulfur dioxide, it has disappeared from industrialized and urbanized areas. In Périgord it can still be found, here and there.

Spotted Sandmat

Some plants love tarmac, especially on small roads. This is the case for this spurge, Spotted Sandmat (Euphorbia maculata). It flattens itself on the surface of the road and covers it with many small stems.





It is not true all Spurges look alike, in fact the Euphorbiaceae family is very diverse with species you would not consider Spurges at all, at first sight. In France there are only two groups of the genus Euphorbia: the green-yellow ones that generally hold themselves upright, and the green-reddish ones that are more spreading. Spotted Sandmat belongs to the last group.






The leaves have sometimes ted spots. It is easy to recognize the fruits as those of a Spurge, little hanging balls. With Spotted Sandmat they are covered with white silky hairs.





You think to see white flowers, but no, they are not real flowers, but white appendices to the glands. The real flowers, small and greenish, are inside those glands and not visible in the picture.




Spotted Sandmat is an introduced species originally from North America and now it grows everywhere in Perigord.

Prostrate Toadflax

It is not any longer in flower, the Prostrate Toadflax (Linaria supina). At this time of the year it only has fruits. The little black seeds are just visible in the seedcases.





During summer luminous yellow flowers, for so small a plant rather large, attract insects, not only bees but also those that can get to the end of the long spur. Leaves are thin and linear.





 
Prostrate Toadflax is a mediterranean plant from dry and stony places like rocky slopes. In Dordogne we don't find it that often. Here and there on some limestone hillsides well exposed to the sun, but mostly in railroad stations between the rails, an artificial habitat that looks very much like the scree it prefers.




 
The flowers are richly adorned wit diverse protrusions, all kinds of yellow and red, and a variety of stripes.

Water Germander

After this hot and dry summer many lakes, ponds and reservoirs are dried out. The water has simply evaporated in the heat or - most of it - has been used by farmers to water their cornfields. It is normal there is less water in in summer than in spring, but this year really a lot of water disppeared. This is serious, and it created real problems for many natural habitats and the species that are dependent on them. But there are exceptions, like this Water Germander (Teucrium scordium). It is abundant this year.





It grows in wet habitats where the water level changes during the year, as here in a large reservoir. You won't find it in the center of the lake; there is always water, even in the hottest of summer. You won't find it either near or on the edges because there it is too dry. But between the two, where the water retires more and more during summer, it thrives. Its underground roots stay alive during inundated periods and when the lake dries out it makes new sprouts and also a lot of stolons in the drying mud with which it spreads over a large surface.





Like al germanders, it has flowers with only one lip, the lower one. The leaves have rounded dents and they are very downy. Like many flowers of the Lamiaceae family, Water Germander is aromatic.

Round-leaved Fluellen

Now the flowering is over. A maze of small branches full of heat-shaped leaves and tiny fruits cover the naked soil in this little spot of wasteland. The downy leaves of Round-leaved Fluellen (Kickxia spuria) are covered with dewdrops, which makes them look rather greyish in this image.





Round-leaved Fluellen is a plant of arable lands, but not only, you can find it also outside agricultural fields and garden allotments.





It is an annual plant and normally it only begins to grow when summer is well on its way. It grows fast and efficient, in only a few weeks a plant can make long spaghettis covered in leaves and flowers. The latter are small but colourful, their spurs look like the tail of a small animal seen from above.




The lip, here closed, is deep dark red, nearly black, and the rest of the flower is pale yellow. A striking contrast.

Best wishes, Fluellen !

Tomato

The railways in Dordogne are less and less frequented by trains. Between the rails now grows a Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plant. It is not a wild tomato, probably it comes from a fruit eaten by a traveller, or maybe it went through some bird's intestine.





Tomates are autofertile, the pollen of a flower can fecundate the egg cells of the same flower. For this reason, quite often the 'children' af a tomato plant have the same traits for taste, size and colour as the original plant.






Will the station manager eat fresh tomatoes? It could be, those beautiful fruits still have some weeks to ripen before it gets too cold and dark.

Marsh Thistle

In this wet meadow not recently mowed, new and bigger species replace the plants that grew here when it was stiil used for making hay. The biggest plants are some high-rising thistles.





Marsh Thistle (Cirsium palustre) can grow more than two metres high. It grows in wet or humid places with lots of light and a rather fertile soil, maybe a bit ruderalized or abandoned.





One single plant can make a wood of spiny branches. See here such a branch in detail:





The plant is covered everywhere in fine pink spikes, with white hairs between them.






At the end of every branch there are a dozen of small flower heads, typical thistle flowers.





The plants makes thousands of small white seeds with silky pappusses. You can distinguish Cirsium thistles from Carduus thistles because with the former the pappus is feathery, while it has simple hairs with the latter.

If this meadow is not mown very soon, ligneous plants wil begin to develop and in a few years there will be a wood of Alders and Ashes. And probably a lot of brambles.

False Oat-grass

On the side of a track grows this big grass that grows higher than the others.





False Oat-grass (Arrhenaterum elatius) grows nearly everywhere and here and there it can still be found flowering.





Above an ear in full bloom. The spikelets on thin stalks grow on right angles off the central axis, the culm, and every spikelet contains several flowers. The little wine-red things, like flags pending in the wind, are stamina. Because False Oat-grass is so big it is a bit less difficult than with other grasses to see the flowers in detail.





Here a spikelet seen from front. It holds several florets. In the foreground a monoecious flower. You can see a pair of feather-like stigma, one to the left and one to the right. From the center of the floret also two stamina protrude, thin stalks that carry those flag-like reddish anthers. Behind this floret another flower is hidden, a male one, from which you see mainly the two stamina. Above those flowers, pointing upwards, there is one of the bracts, glumes, that envelop the spikelet. Also every individual floret is surrounded by two scales, lemma and palea. The largest of the two, here visible pointing downwards with a long spike, is the lemma of the dioicious (male) flower.






Grasses are complicated...

Dog Rose

Wall-like growth, nearly impossible to get through, separates a small meadow and the surrounding woods. There are many brambles but also other bushes, some of them in flower. The big white umbels are of an Elder (Sambucus nigra) and the little pink spots are roses, to be more precise, Dog Roses (Rosa canina).




There are several species of wild roses in Dordogne and the Dog Roses is probably the most common of them. It flowres smell, they smell even very good, as it should be for a rose. The leaves, when you rub them between your fingers, do not have much smell.





Dog Roses flower in May and June with big simple flowers, pink or white (or both).





The petals are slightly indented and the sepals have long fringes. The leaves end with a point. Les feuilles sont pointues, smooth, or as here, just a bit downy.






Sometimes they stay on the plant until after the first frost.





The rosehips that grow during summer sometimes stay on the branches until the end of winter. At least, when they are not eaten by a bird or a fox.





It is a rose with long shoots that can get several metres long. The thorns are big and curved.





All year round wild roses are beautiful!

Knotted Clover

Everybody knows white and red clovers but there are so many other species in Dordogne! Often they are not really remarkable, because they are not big and not spectacular. Her a little pinkish one in a meadow, Knotted Clover (Trifolium striata).





In the picture below you can see it has longish flower-heads with light pink flowers and slightly hairy leaves. The calyxes of individual flowers are reddish with stripes. The veins of the tiny leaves are nearly straight.






You cannot exactly call the Knotted Clover stunning, but seen from nearby, well, it has some charms.

It is proper to clovers that withered flowers stay on the developing fruit. Knotted Clover is no exception, here below you can see them as brown spots on the flower-heads after flowering.






The pointed lobes of the calyxes make the flower-heads look like little hedgehogs.






Here you can see it amidst other clovers, a yellow species that is much more common, Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre). The two species grow in meadows, the yellow one nearly everywhere and the pink one only rarely found.