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!




June 17, 2019

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...