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.