Holm Oak

This big tree has green leaves even in winter. Sometimes it forms real forests, mainly on dry limestone hills, but not only there, in Perigord there are some exemples on sandy soil. It is Holm Oak (Quercus ilex). 

 

Yes, it is a real Oak, it makes acorns.

 

 

Here they are still small. You see mainly the cup from where an acorn tries to grow out. Remnants of the female flower are still visible like a tiny brown star.

 

Holm Oak has Autumn and Spring at the same time. The leaves, that can stay on the branches for several years, loose their chlorophyl and then fall down in May. In the same period the tree makes new sprouts and flowers. Young leaves are tender green and they as well as the new branches are covered in a kind of whitish felt.

At the top of this stem, where the leaves are attached, you see some very small female flowers. The dry brown scales are remnants of the leaf buds.

 

 

Male catkins are much larger. They grow on the same tree.

Holm Oak grows slower than other Oaks from Perigord, but it can stand hot and dry weather somewhat better. Climate changing, with hotter and dryer summers is no good news for Oaks, but this species could have a slight evolutionary advantage over other Oak species.

It is a wild - indigenous - tree, but in Dordogne there are many strains coming from elsewhere. Mycorrhized with truffle mycelium, Holm Oaks are planted to harvest this tasty and expensive mushroom.

 

Blackthorn

The blue fruits, sloes, are edible but only after the first frost, otjerwise they are to acid and astringent. They grow on a small very thorny bush, Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa).  

 

It is very common in Perigord, you can find it at the limits of woods and along abandoned agricultural fields, especially on limestone soil. Blackthorn makes new stalks from its roots, and in a few years its branches can form literally impenetrable hedges.

 

 

 

Somewhat frightening!

But spiders love it.

 

Apparently it is a good home base for lichens.

It is one of the first Prunuses to flower in spring and it does this abundantly. Here below the flowers lost already their petals.

 

 

Only the little brushes of the stamens are still there. And now, we have to wait for fruits.

 

 

Pale Swallow-wort

On this field, plants are covered in dewdrops and spider-webs. Some yellow plants are especially ceye-catching. They are Pale Swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum hirundinaria) in autumn attire.

 

 

They grow on limestone soil, mainly in meadows or open spaces in Downy Oak woods where the sun can get to them.

 

 

Here a place after logging. Now the trees are gone many plants took advantage of the light and there is no space left. Pale Swallow-wort looks a bit lost in all this green.

 

 

 

 

It has many small cream-colored flowers. The petals are thick. The opposite oval-shaped leaves are thin and supple. With some effort you can understand that Pale Swallow-wort is a cousin of Periwinkles, the shape of the flowers and the number of petals, and also the leaves look alike, even if Periwinkle has thin and supple petals and leathery leaves.

Pale Swallowwort has a reputation as an antidote against snake-bites. But, maybe you should avoid this remedy, you risk being empoisoned twice. Notwithstanding 'officinal' in its name, this is a really toxic plant.

 

But beautiful with those autumn leaves!

(The red berries that contrast so well with it are from another plant, also poisonous, Black Bryony.)

 

Least Pepperwort

During a large part of the year you can find Least Pepperwort (Lepidium virginicum) in bloom. It makes a lot of tiny white flowers and if for one reason or another a branch is cut, it just begins anew to make new branches and flowers.

 

Often you see flowers, fruits and remnants of fruits on the same plant. The fruits are little disks with an incision on top.

 

 

At the first stage of flowering there are still many leaves, rather long and with some dents; with time it looses the larger part of its leaves and concentrates on flowers and fruits. How can it manage with so little chlorophyll-driven production of energy? It does not have a stock in its roots, it is an annual plant without a big root-system. Maybe it does not rely too much on extra energy, it produces as many seeds as long as possible until it is spent.

 

Here a well-developed plant. It has the upright shape typical for Lepidium Pepperworts. You can find Least Pepperwort mainly in antropogenic places, like here on a little-used driveway.

 

Common Heliotrope

 

This plant with its small white flowers just begins to bloom after summer and it goes on until October. Common Heliotrope (Heliotropium europaeus) normally grows in cultivated fields after harvest and in habitats that resemble those, like vegetable gardens.

 

 

Its flowers are small but there are many of them. At this moment you mostly see the fruits that develop along the stems.

 

Every stem grows into a scorpioid cyme that unfurls and becomes larger during flowering. This kind of cyme you can also find on other plants of the Boraginaceae family (as Forget-me-nots)

 

Here the top of a cyme at the beginning of flowering. The leaves are a bit rough, also a distinctive feature of this family.  

Lesser Calamint

 

Surprise! A cereal field after harvest in summer has changed into a flower meadow. It is covered in purple. And a spicy smell emanates from it. Lesser Calamint (Clinopodium nepeta subsp nepeta) is in full bloom and it is has a strong perfume, a mix of mint and pharmacy. Most Calamints have a smell, but compared to this subspecies of Lesser Calamint they are very understated.

 

 

 

You don't risk to smell it often, this Lesser Calament is very rare. You find it especially in cultivated fields and it does not like fertilizer or herbicides or insecticides. So you understand why it is so rare.

 

Like other Calamints it is an autumn plant. Before August you won't find it and it flowers until November or even later. It has whorls of small flowers with calyxes with short dents, important criterion to distinguish it from its cousins.

Those small dense tufts look good between the warm yellow limestone of this field.

See you next year, Lesser calamint!

Wild Basil

 

This plant with its small round leaves contrasts nicely with recently fallen Sweet Chestnut leaves. It is Wild basil (Clinopodium vulgare) at the end of its flowering season.

There are not many flowers left and it looks like they are all sitting on their own, not grouped together. For that reason they could be confused with Calamints (the other plants of the genus Clinopodium). Use your nose: most Calamints are perfumed, a smell somewhere in between mint and marjoram, more or less strong. Wild Basil has no particular smell, it smells green, that's all. And its name? Should be the shape of the leaves, not the smell.

Normally many flowers are grouped around the nodes, forming little round structures.

 

 

In autumn the plant has no strength left to make more than a few flowers.

 

Dried-out calyxes that had flowers a few weeks ago are all what is left.

You can find them everywhere, Wild basil is a common plant on many kinds of soil. But it seems they have a preference for sides of a path. To the delight of walkers.

 

Devil's Bit Scabious

This path goes through a Sweet Chestnut wood on sandy soil. Just the right place for Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis). Notwithstanding two months without rain it is flowering abundantly. The heat was not a real problem for it, even if some leaves are drooping.

 

Surely, here it grows in shade. In fact it needs a soil that is not dry a large part of the year, but during its flowering season, from August into November it can do with what it gets.

 

 

You see its beauty especially when you get nearby. The flowerheads contain numerous small blue-lilac flowers that happily contrast with the pink stamens.

Do you think Devil's Bit Scabious is a Scabious? You are right, the genus Succisa belongs as well as the genus Scabiosa to the Dipsaceae family.

To complicate things: recently, for good reasons that do not concern us, the biologists community concluded that Dipsaceae should from now on be part of the Caprifoliaceae family. It does not matter that much, we can go on enjoying this plant exactly as we did!

 

 

 

 

Here, Devil's Bit Scabious in a more open setting, a meadow in the Dordogne valley.

 

If it does not flower you can find its leaves at ground level. Mowing or herbivores cannot do much harm.

Wayfaring Tree

 

Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum lantana) us a rather chaotic bush that can be found in dry spots on limestone soil. It grows in sunny places, but it prefers just a bit of shade, as here on the edge of a Downy Oak forest.

 

 

Now it has already made berries and they are nearly finished, difficult to find the last ones.

In the background green berries that never ripened, surrounded by brown leaves. When ripening, the berries turn from red into black. Often you find bunches with berries of both colours.

 

 

The flowers, in April, smell good and they are a beautiful creamy white. 

Those red soils are not limestone at all! In Dordogne you can find acidic soils just beside the limestone. That is why you can find typical limestone vegetation just a step away from typical vegetation for acidic soil. So there is an explanation for finding Wayfaring Tree in this image.

 

 

 

The leaves of Wayfaring Tree are a bit downy, maybe to protect them against drying out.

 

 

Even when it rains...

 

 

Round-headed Rampion

Many plants don't feel like flowering now after weeks of very hot and very dry weather. But Round-headed Rampion (Phyteuma orbicularis) took a different decision.

The plants are only tiny this year and not easy to spot on this dry, sunny slope. Notwithstanding their beautiful blue colour they hide themselves rather well.

A little Flower crab-spider choose a flower head as a lookout post for prey. When the photographer comes near, it tries to hide.

 

 

 

 

Some long and slender leaves at the base of a stalk of net yet twenty centimeters and some smaller ones on it, and this blue. That's all!

Soapwort

When you rub some flowers of this plant between your hand, you get a kind of foam and you can wash your hands with it. At least, Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) can give you the impression you really got clean hands.

 

 

 

 

 

It is a plant that lives in large communities with lots of stalks wit bunches of pink flowers. You find them often on roadsides and edges of cultivated fields. It needs a not too poor soil and planty of place for the whole clan.

 

 

Already when it flowers, fruits develop.

But it happens that, after summer and after having been cut, Soapwort flowers again.

 

Great Willowherb

Not far from a stream, nearly in the shade of trees, grow some tall plants. They just begin to flower.

To find Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) you first have to find a stream, river or pond, because it needs water to flourish. It likes fertile soil, with humus or maybe nutrients brought with flooding.

It has a lot of small very pink flowers and conspicuous white, cross-shaped pistils. The stamens are rather understated by comparison.

The whole plant is covered in soft, velvety hairs that make it nice to the touch. Under the flowers, the growing fruits with a reddish tinge are already visible.

When the fruits ripen they burst open in four parts and from each part, small brown seeds with white feathery hairs appear. They will fly away.

Yellow-wort

Maybe the leaves are the most prominent part of this plant of the Gentian family.
 

They are glaucous and look like a kind of saucer pierced in the center to let through the stem.

But look at the flowers of Yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata). Could be worse!

Ten yellow petals spiralling around each other get upwards fromù a nest of ten pointed sepals.

Early in the morning they are not yet open.

Yellow-wort grows in meadows and open spaces in woods on limestone. Generally some scattered plants, not big groups like here.

 

It flowers mainly in early summer. Now, in July, it makes fruits.

Still some weeks, and maybe a little heatwave, and you'll find only dried out stalks Between the dry grasses.