Soapwort

When you rub some flowers of this plant between your hand, you get a kind of foam and you can wash your hands with it. At least, Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) can give you the impression you really got clean hands.

 

 

 

 

 

It is a plant that lives in large communities with lots of stalks wit bunches of pink flowers. You find them often on roadsides and edges of cultivated fields. It needs a not too poor soil and planty of place for the whole clan.

 

 

Already when it flowers, fruits develop.

But it happens that, after summer and after having been cut, Soapwort flowers again.

 

Great Willowherb

Not far from a stream, nearly in the shade of trees, grow some tall plants. They just begin to flower.

To find Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) you first have to find a stream, river or pond, because it needs water to flourish. It likes fertile soil, with humus or maybe nutrients brought with flooding.

It has a lot of small very pink flowers and conspicuous white, cross-shaped pistils. The stamens are rather understated by comparison.

The whole plant is covered in soft, velvety hairs that make it nice to the touch. Under the flowers, the growing fruits with a reddish tinge are already visible.

When the fruits ripen they burst open in four parts and from each part, small brown seeds with white feathery hairs appear. They will fly away.

Yellow-wort

Maybe the leaves are the most prominent part of this plant of the Gentian family.
 

They are glaucous and look like a kind of saucer pierced in the center to let through the stem.

But look at the flowers of Yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata). Could be worse!

Ten yellow petals spiralling around each other get upwards fromù a nest of ten pointed sepals.

Early in the morning they are not yet open.

Yellow-wort grows in meadows and open spaces in woods on limestone. Generally some scattered plants, not big groups like here.

 

It flowers mainly in early summer. Now, in July, it makes fruits.

Still some weeks, and maybe a little heatwave, and you'll find only dried out stalks Between the dry grasses.

White Rock-rose

A patch of white flowers grows against the stone wall of an old quarry. They are runaways from the limestone meadow on top. Limestone meadows are the favorite habitat of  of White Rock-rose (Helianthemum apenninum).

In spring it produces a lot of white flowers. Sometimes it flowers again in autumn or even in summer, if a sudden thunderstorm brings rain.

Like many Cistaceae, White Rock-rose is a little bush well adapted to the environment it grows in, porous limestone soils that easily dry out. To prevent too much evaporation, the edges of its long leaves fold can unto themselves.

 
The flowers are easy to recognize, with their slightly crumpled white petals and yellow stamens like a paintbrush.

Fern-grass

Many grasses flower in May. Also this Fern-grass (Catapodium rigida) that shows off the little whitish stamens that cover its spikelets, as if somebody sprinkled them with sugar.

Grasses (Poaceae) are anemochores, they need the wind to disperse their pollen. Not that easy to take advantage of the wind if you are small and low on the ground.

Apparently, Fern-grass manages well, it flourishes notwithstanding its small size. It grows everywhere in arid spots where there is not much other vegetation. Like a limestone meadow on dry soil, between the gravel on a path, or, as here above, on a stone wall.

It does not really look like a fern.

More like a toothbrush. Its spikelets are in two rows both turned towards one side.

For a plant so tiny it is rather conspicuous, even between more colourful Trefoils you cannot not see it.

Two Sow-thistles

Especially in somewhat ruderalized surroundings and not far from human activity you can find Sow-thistles. Those big 'Thistles' enjoyed the rain from past weeks to grow really big. The two species here below are easy to find. They look much alike.

Here Prickly Sow-thistle (Sonchus asper) on the side of a small road. (Take 'prickly' with a grain of salt.)

And here Perennial Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) on the edge of a field. (Also take 'perennial' with a grain of salt, it is mostly annual.) Both species have yellow flowers in open, slightly chaotic, panicles.

Maybe the inflorescences of Prickly Sow-thistle are a bit less dense, and the flowers of a slightly darker yellow...

 
...than those of Perennial Sow-thistle). But the difference is not really big.
For a safe bet, look at the leaves.

Perennial Sow-thistle has deeply incised leaves often glaucous and not shiny. Where the leaf is attached to the stem there is on both sides a pointed auricle.

The leaves of Prickly Sow-thistle are prickly, of course, but they are nothing compared to those of real thistles. They are brilliant on the upper surface, and green with sometimes a tinge of red. There are also auricles, and they are rounded.

And this spring rosette? Difficult to see, notwithstanding its bluish colour it is a Prickly Sow-thistle.

Annual Pea

Because of lockdown we have to stay near our homes. In Dordogne there are still many corners with interesting wildflowers, and you risk, even when you respect lockdown rules, to come upon some surprising plants. Like this little yellow pea, an Annual Pea (Lathyrus annuus) that grows on the edge of a field just a bit more than 100 m from a house.

Its leaves look like the grass blades on which it attaches itself with its curling vines. If there are no flowers it is surely difficult to find it.

This plant made already big pods covered with very fine hairs. A fair chance it will be back next year. It was not evident to find its name, it is not yet in the 'flore de Dordogne'. There are only very few mentions for this species in Dordogne, so it is very rare and it is really extraordinary to stumble upon it.

Some questions need to be asked. Why is Annual Pea so rare? It is considered as a Mediterranean plant, is it enlarging its area towards the North because spring temperatures are on the rise? Or has it been here since long and has become rare because of (let's say) destruction of habitat? Or has it been always rare?

To verify.