Field Maple

Leaves are turning into gold.

Hera a leaf of a Field Maple (Acer campestre). This tree is easy to find in the wild but it is also often planted. A row of Field Maple make a good hedge and protect against windy weather and it is easy to trim. It is not a difficult tree, it grows on nearly all kinds of soils (maybe with a slight preference for limestone) and supports very well dry summers.

Here it is embellished with spider webs and lichens.

The fruits are called samaras and they are typical for maples. They grow in pairs, every samara carries a wing, and when they fall down together they turn and wheel like little helicopters.

Some branches with summer leaves.

Floating Primrose-willow

It is supposed to be a really intrusive invasive plant, but, no matter, Floating Primrose-willow (Ludwigia peploides subsp. montevidensis) is pretty to look at.

At the end of summer, yes, until in October, it shows off ist yellow flowers. It grows in water or at in places where land and water touch. Here and there it form dense mats of vegetation on the banks of the Dordogne river or even in the water where there is not much current.

Rosettes of leaves detach themselves from the mother plant and float down the river to new spots.

Autumn Squill

On this roadside colours have changed. It is no longer sallow grey and dry yellow.
Many tiny blue stalks appear from the morning fog.

 

Those are Autumn Squills (Scilla autumnalis) and, never seen before, this year there are so many of them they nearly cover the soil. And they are big, most plants have a dozen of flowers or more. Well, big...

You would not think plants like those dry summers. But maybe, in this case, the underground bulbs took some strenght from abundant and long-lasting spring showers? In summer Autumn Squill has no leaves or stems above ground, so possibly it did not suffer thet much from hot sunshine and drought.

A little white plant between hundreds of blue flowers. Why not?
  

The flowers are still closed, waiting for the sun coming through. In an hour they wil open up like little stars, and it will be more easy to see they are real squills.

There are not only Autumn Squils here. Carline Thistle (Carlina vulgaris) and a tiny Rough Marsh Mallow (Althaea hirsuta) are dried out completely and veiled by spider webs. They also are part of the flora of calcareous meadows.

Hop Trefoil

Like everywhere in Dordogne clovers abound. There are about twenty different species, white, pink or yellow. Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre) is very common and like all clovers it leaves consist of three leaflets stipulated at its base. It flowers in May and June, and if the summer is not too harsh and dry it will linger on.

Not this summer. It was rather hot and there was virtually no rain in three months. No problem, most plants in this kind of meadow do survive very well and have a full life cycle, flower, and produce  seeds, before the beginning of the dry season. 

See here the result. A meadow in tints of brown and grey from dried and sun-scorched plants. Yes, there is beauty in it, let's admit it...
The scorching changed the colour of the heads of Hop Trefoil, but not their shape. The Hop Trefoil flower heads are round and brown. The fruits are ripe now, but completely hidden in the dead flowers, like with other clovers the petals stay on the plant after flowering.

Some months ago. The banner - the largest petal of the butterfly-shaped flower - is folded backwards and downwards

Harebell

Little blue flowers grow between the taller grasses on a roadside. Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) begins to flower at the end of summer and goes on until the first frost. It grows nearly everywhere and the hot and dry August weather does not bother it at all.

Its thin stems carry little blue bells, opening like a five-pointed star.

The english name is easy to understand, they are just the right size for a hare who wants to take home a bunch of flowers to put in a vase. But why the scientific name 'rotundifolia'? There are not many leaves and those you can find are long and slender, not round at all.

You have to go back some weeks. At ground level you find a small plant with round, or nearly round, leaves, young leaves, and all kind of shapes in between. When the Harebell begins to make new sprouts, it starts with roundish leaves. When the season goes on, it makes leaves of a more oval shape. And the newest leaves are outright longish. When at last the first flowers develop, the round leaves have all but disappeared.

'Mountain Needle Sunrose'

The weather is really hot, the sun burns and scorches, plants turn yellow and brown.

Here a 'Mountain Needle Sunrose' (Fumana ericifolia, no English name known) begins to take autumn colours. This very small bush grows at ground level in sunny meadows and other open areas on limestone soil. In spite of the mountain in its name it prefers lowland or hills.

Now there are many rust-coloured fruits, with here and there still a flower.

To see the flowers you should start early, the flowering of this tiny Rochrose is ephemeral and after only a few hours the petals fall.

There exist other Needle Sunroses, but with this one the flowers have long pedicles that bow down after flowering.

Lamarck's Bedstraw

Lamarck's Bedstraw (Galium divaricatum) is too subtle to be seen easily. You look through a cloud of thin stems and very tiny fruits and what you see is essentially the grass that grows behind it. With a camera it is a bit more easy, you focus on the plant and the vegetation around disappears in an out-of-focus blurry.

It is a real Bedstraw, chaotic stems growing in every direction without any regard for the laws of gravitation. You don't know where the plant begins or where it ends.

The square stems have some verticillated leaves at the nodes. Very tiny course hairs give it a rough and scabrous feel when touched.

Concerning the flowers, they exist but you need a magnifying glass to see them, a flower measures half a millimeter maximum. A small reddish or pink bump on the young fruits, that's all. In theory they are star-shaped with four points, like other bedstaws, but this is theory as long as you can't see.

After flowering, the flowers at least respect gravity's laws, the small fruits hang down on short peducules, and this distinguishes Lamarck's Bedstaw from a near relation among bedstraws. Rather subtle, also...