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!