A foggy day in winter. We are on the slopes above the Dordogne river. On descending we arrive on a little outcrop between the oaks. There are no flowers anymore but the remnants of perennial plants flowering here in another season are still visible.
Grasses, fallen leaves and the long blackened stems cover this little height. The latter are from Inula spiraeifolia (let us call it 'Spirea-leaved Fleabane', it has no official name in English). It is a plant of dry limestone slopes and you don't find it very often in Perigord.
'Spirea-leaved Fleabane' generally grows in tufts or larger groups and its stalks carry dense corymbs with small flowerheads. You cannot see anymore that its flowers have been yellow.
For that you have to wait until spring.
In July it does not pass unnoticed!
Here, the wind, or maybe a roe deer, managed to flatten the stems like stalks in a cereal field after a storm. Not that easy, those stems are rigid and tend to keep upright whatever happens. The leaves are more or less vertical and there are a lot of them.
Another Fleabane looks very much like it and it is easy to confound the two species. Sometimes they grow near each other. Irish Fleabane (Inula salicina) is less rare and has a wider range, it grows also in more humid and sandy places.
It has larger flower heads solitary on their stems or a few together. And its leaves are horizontal, the tips slightly bending down.