Common Cudweed

It is not exceptional at all when a plant adapts itself to a life near us, humans. Agriculture created possibilities for many wildflowers. The tilling of the soil at regular intervals eliminates competion from other plants for space, food, water and light and softens up the soil so seeds can germinate and form roots more easily.

Common Cudweed (Filago pyramidata) grows in agricultural fields, in fallow lands and in habitats that resemble those. Apparently it has some resistance against herbicides and fungicides commonly used in cereal fields because they are quite common. For that matter, the harvested field here is organic.

Common Cudweed is a rather stiff plant with at the end of every candelabra-shaped branch a round head with small yellow flowers.  It is grey-green, stalks and leaves are covered in felt-like hairs that protects them against drying out and maybe also agains predator insects.

Like all plants of the Composite (Asteraceae) family it has composite flower heads. In this case they are doubly composite. Whzat you see is a round ball with small yellowish pointed structures.

 

 

Every yellow point is a flower head of about 5 mm lenght with some tubular flowers surrounded by green bracts and spiderweb-like hairs that give it a felty appearance. Twenty or thirty of those flower heads for a round ball wuth at its base two or three larger bracts.  And every plant can carry dozens of those balls. How many flowers produces Common Cudweed? May be hub=ndreds, with also hundreds of seeds to give it a good chance for dispersal and survival.

This makes it different from the 'real' messicoles, plants from arable fields completely adapted to cereal cultures, with a life cycle with the same periodicity as cereals and not many seeds, often the same size as wheat so they can be harvested and sown with them.

 

In a field left fallow for a year many different plants grow. Between the Fescues (the long blond grasses) you can see yellow Saint-John's-worts and also big tufts of Common Cudweed.

Here, Common Cudweed has dried out even if it is surrounded by a lot of still green plants.  Why is it already nearly dead? I don't know. The field is dry and poor, destinated to become a truffle plantation. Also this year there were weeks with a lot of rain but also weeks with very hot and dry weather, and many plants grew faster and taller than usually. Maybe Common Cudweed has made already his seeds and now it has decided its season is over before summer. We cannot ask it.