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!