Blue Fleabane

There are still many flowers. In the soft golden light of an autumn afternoon they show at their best.

Here, Blue Fleabane (Erigeron acer) makes a spot of soft colours in a neglected grassland.

Most of the plant is done in pinks and reds and purples, only the tubular flowers in the centre of the flower heads are yellowish.

Narrowleaf Hemp-nettle

Next to French Bartsia grows a plant with really purple flowers.

There are a lot of them and they are what you call visible. Narrowleaf Hemp-nettle (Galeopsis angustifolia) is also a follower of agriculture.

It flowers after harvest between the cut cereal stalks and flowering can go on until the first frosts. If the farmer does not plough his field of course.

Seen from nearby the flower is exquisite.

French Bartsia

You need some chance to find French Bartsia (Odontites jaubertianus). It flowers only at the end of September and you can't call it exactly conspicuous. And it does not grow on the side of a walking path, it prefers less accessible spots like agricultural fields or wastelands. And when it does not have flowers, it really looks very much like other Bartsias.

It is endemic in France, it only grows here. It was thought that French Bartsia had disappeared from the Dordogne département. But no, at the boundary of a harvested field of cereals it still grows in crowds. Here a few dozens of plants, a bit hidden in the vegetation around it.

It looks very much like  Yellow Bartsia, the same rather stiff reddish stems with small opposite leaves. Maybe French Bartsia is a bit stockier. There are French Bartsias with pale yellow or salmon pink flowers, sometimes mixed with plants with darker yellow and orange tinted flowers. This is normal, French Bartsia comes in two tones.

Probably because its forebears, Yellow Bartsia and Red Bartsia, have different colours. It is an allopolyploïd. Which means that, a long time ago during hybridization, the new species kept or even doubled or quadrupled all the chromosomes of its two ancestors. We think it has the possibility to show any of those colours and that every plant 'chooses' its colour according to circumstances.

The flowers are slightly more closed than those of other Bartsia species. Also a bit hairier, but you need a looking-glass to see that.



 

Stemless Thistle

In some places, when summer is nearly over, you can find a small thistle between the low grass. The leaves are as prickly as those of bigger thistles!
The Stemless Thistle (Cirsium acaule) grows at ground level in calcareous meadows.

It is stemless...

... or nearly so.

Also visible in the picture are the fluffy seeds.

They catch the light of the evening sun.

Brazilian Waterweed

The water in the river Dordogne got warmer during this hot summer. For a number of aquatic plants this created the right circumstances for an explosion of new vegetation. Here, just above a dam, the river is calm and two different kinds of Waterweed weave their snake-like shoots.

The big snakes are shoots from Brazilian Waterweed (Egeria densa) and the small snakes are from Curly Waterweed (Lagarosiphon major). Both come from hotter parts of the world, The first one from Latin America, and the other from Southern Africa. May be they escaped from an aquarium or came along with a ship. Anyhow, now they are here and thriving. Or should you say, invading?

The shoots of Brazilian Waterweed are nearly elegant in the slightly troubled water.

And yes, it is in full bloom. The flowers float on the water surface on long thin stems. In France, Brazilian Waterweed only makes male flowers and breeds by loosing its shoots. They float with the river or are taken by ducks and swans.

Woolly Distaff-thistle

A wall of thistles in a stony field. The farmer has given up growing something here this year, the corn has not even germinated. It was too dry and too hot. He did not even worry about herbicides.

So much the better for those Woolly Distaff-thistles (Carthamus lanatus). You don't often see them in such large quantities, in fact, you nearly never see them, they are becoming very rare. They look nearly dead, but no. They are well adapted to dry circumstances, only the upper part of the plant is still green.


Nevertheless, in another field, a cereal field after harvest, grow also some plants.

Here, they are greener and still show some yellow flowers. The Woolly Distaff-thistle is very prickly, its bracts and leaves are tough and spiky, not at all soft as wool.

The seeds are rather big and they carry a crown of scales.

There are a lot of them in this stony field. Are they going to give new plants next spring, or are the voles going to eat them all?

'Beggar's Ticks Dodder'

Dodders are parasitic plants. They don't have roots nor leaves, and their thin stems garland around their host plants. And they suck the saps of those. Let's call this one 'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' (Cuscuta scandens) because it often seems to grow on Beggar's Ticks (Bidens frondosa).

It is considered as an invasive plant, like the plant it has chosen to grow on here, for that matter. The Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), with its big leaves is a serious pest in many parts of France.'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' is still quite uncommon in Perigord, but its numbers are increasing. It grows in some places on the Dordogne banks, and the river helps it to go elsewhere.

Many little white flowers will give many round seeds.