Daffodil

 

This flower that shows us its trumpet is a Daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus). Its white tepals are nearly gone. Is it alone? 

 

 

Surely not, Daffodils mosty grow in large groups and here, on top of a cliff, everywhere on the forest floor you see its long green leaves.

 

 

Most Daffodil bulbs only produce leaves. Only after some years and in favorable circumstances they will carry flowers. Many of those bulbs will never flower. Daffodils grow from seed but also from small bulbs that develop on older plants. Thus, in tens or maybe even hundreds of years, they can cover a large surface.

 

 

Daffodils like humus and places with light shadow and not too dry soil. Here they grow high up a steep slope, out of reach from those who want to pick the flowers. In Dordogne, Daffodils are rare and they are so beautiful people like to get the bulbs for their garden, but here, they survive..

This group on the edge of the cliff risks to loos equilibrium and to fall down. Indeed, below some plants grow, even if they don't flower. Maybe the result of earlier falls.

 

 

The wild Daffodil is at the origin of many cultivars, sometime after hybridization with other Narcissus. But those plants here are really wild. They are smaller that garden Daffodils and yellow and white instead of yellow.

 

 

The microclimat makes a difference, in the place high up there are clearly more plants still flowering. More sun, less wind, more shade from the rocks?

Grey Willow

 

Those branches are somewhat ridged, if you remove the bark you can see that the wood is striated. This is typical for the Grey Willow (Salix atrocinerea). Often it is difficult to distinguish the different Willow species, still more so because they easily form hybrids. In Dordogne, Grey Willow is the commonest species.

 

This big bush or small tree grows nearly everywhere in places where it is wet enough during a large part of the year.

 

Here an old specimen on the edge of a pond. It has finished flowering before the new leaves appear, and now the male catkins that lost their pollen have fallen and now float on the water surface. The Salicaceae (Willow and Poplar family) are all dioeciousc. This means they have flowers with only pistils or only stamens, never both of them, and on every individual plant you find only pistillate or only staminate flowers, never both of them.

 

The catkins are downy, maybe that's why they are called 'catkins', But when they are in full bloom you don't see the downy hairs, the long filaments of the stamens topped with yellow pollen are longer than the hairs. In every catkin there are dozens of flowers, each with two stamens.

 

The female catkins here are growing and turning from grey to green, they begin to open up. As woth male catkins there are dozens of flowersin each catkin. Every flower bears a gourd-like structure that ends in a yellow tip. This is the carpel that later on will carry the seed with its yellow pistils.

 

Some long-awaited raindrops don't do much harm. A leaf of last year has not fallen, in Grey Willow it is more oval than long.