October 30, 2020

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.