Pale Swallow-wort

On this field, plants are covered in dewdrops and spider-webs. Some yellow plants are especially ceye-catching. They are Pale Swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum hirundinaria) in autumn attire.

 

 

They grow on limestone soil, mainly in meadows or open spaces in Downy Oak woods where the sun can get to them.

 

 

Here a place after logging. Now the trees are gone many plants took advantage of the light and there is no space left. Pale Swallow-wort looks a bit lost in all this green.

 

 

 

 

It has many small cream-colored flowers. The petals are thick. The opposite oval-shaped leaves are thin and supple. With some effort you can understand that Pale Swallow-wort is a cousin of Periwinkles, the shape of the flowers and the number of petals, and also the leaves look alike, even if Periwinkle has thin and supple petals and leathery leaves.

Pale Swallowwort has a reputation as an antidote against snake-bites. But, maybe you should avoid this remedy, you risk being empoisoned twice. Notwithstanding 'officinal' in its name, this is a really toxic plant.

 

But beautiful with those autumn leaves!

(The red berries that contrast so well with it are from another plant, also poisonous, Black Bryony.)

 

Least Pepperwort

During a large part of the year you can find Least Pepperwort (Lepidium virginicum) in bloom. It makes a lot of tiny white flowers and if for one reason or another a branch is cut, it just begins anew to make new branches and flowers.

 

Often you see flowers, fruits and remnants of fruits on the same plant. The fruits are little disks with an incision on top.

 

 

At the first stage of flowering there are still many leaves, rather long and with some dents; with time it looses the larger part of its leaves and concentrates on flowers and fruits. How can it manage with so little chlorophyll-driven production of energy? It does not have a stock in its roots, it is an annual plant without a big root-system. Maybe it does not rely too much on extra energy, it produces as many seeds as long as possible until it is spent.

 

Here a well-developed plant. It has the upright shape typical for Lepidium Pepperworts. You can find Least Pepperwort mainly in antropogenic places, like here on a little-used driveway.

 

Common Heliotrope

 

This plant with its small white flowers just begins to bloom after summer and it goes on until October. Common Heliotrope (Heliotropium europaeus) normally grows in cultivated fields after harvest and in habitats that resemble those, like vegetable gardens.

 

 

Its flowers are small but there are many of them. At this moment you mostly see the fruits that develop along the stems.

 

Every stem grows into a scorpioid cyme that unfurls and becomes larger during flowering. This kind of cyme you can also find on other plants of the Boraginaceae family (as Forget-me-nots)

 

Here the top of a cyme at the beginning of flowering. The leaves are a bit rough, also a distinctive feature of this family.  

Lesser Calamint

 

Surprise! A cereal field after harvest in summer has changed into a flower meadow. It is covered in purple. And a spicy smell emanates from it. Lesser Calamint (Clinopodium nepeta subsp nepeta) is in full bloom and it is has a strong perfume, a mix of mint and pharmacy. Most Calamints have a smell, but compared to this subspecies of Lesser Calamint they are very understated.

 

 

 

You don't risk to smell it often, this Lesser Calament is very rare. You find it especially in cultivated fields and it does not like fertilizer or herbicides or insecticides. So you understand why it is so rare.

 

Like other Calamints it is an autumn plant. Before August you won't find it and it flowers until November or even later. It has whorls of small flowers with calyxes with short dents, important criterion to distinguish it from its cousins.

Those small dense tufts look good between the warm yellow limestone of this field.

See you next year, Lesser calamint!

Wild Basil

 

This plant with its small round leaves contrasts nicely with recently fallen Sweet Chestnut leaves. It is Wild basil (Clinopodium vulgare) at the end of its flowering season.

There are not many flowers left and it looks like they are all sitting on their own, not grouped together. For that reason they could be confused with Calamints (the other plants of the genus Clinopodium). Use your nose: most Calamints are perfumed, a smell somewhere in between mint and marjoram, more or less strong. Wild Basil has no particular smell, it smells green, that's all. And its name? Should be the shape of the leaves, not the smell.

Normally many flowers are grouped around the nodes, forming little round structures.

 

 

In autumn the plant has no strength left to make more than a few flowers.

 

Dried-out calyxes that had flowers a few weeks ago are all what is left.

You can find them everywhere, Wild basil is a common plant on many kinds of soil. But it seems they have a preference for sides of a path. To the delight of walkers.

 

Devil's Bit Scabious

This path goes through a Sweet Chestnut wood on sandy soil. Just the right place for Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis). Notwithstanding two months without rain it is flowering abundantly. The heat was not a real problem for it, even if some leaves are drooping.

 

Surely, here it grows in shade. In fact it needs a soil that is not dry a large part of the year, but during its flowering season, from August into November it can do with what it gets.

 

 

You see its beauty especially when you get nearby. The flowerheads contain numerous small blue-lilac flowers that happily contrast with the pink stamens.

Do you think Devil's Bit Scabious is a Scabious? You are right, the genus Succisa belongs as well as the genus Scabiosa to the Dipsaceae family.

To complicate things: recently, for good reasons that do not concern us, the biologists community concluded that Dipsaceae should from now on be part of the Caprifoliaceae family. It does not matter that much, we can go on enjoying this plant exactly as we did!

 

 

 

 

Here, Devil's Bit Scabious in a more open setting, a meadow in the Dordogne valley.

 

If it does not flower you can find its leaves at ground level. Mowing or herbivores cannot do much harm.

Wayfaring Tree

 

Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum lantana) us a rather chaotic bush that can be found in dry spots on limestone soil. It grows in sunny places, but it prefers just a bit of shade, as here on the edge of a Downy Oak forest.

 

 

Now it has already made berries and they are nearly finished, difficult to find the last ones.

In the background green berries that never ripened, surrounded by brown leaves. When ripening, the berries turn from red into black. Often you find bunches with berries of both colours.

 

 

The flowers, in April, smell good and they are a beautiful creamy white. 

Those red soils are not limestone at all! In Dordogne you can find acidic soils just beside the limestone. That is why you can find typical limestone vegetation just a step away from typical vegetation for acidic soil. So there is an explanation for finding Wayfaring Tree in this image.

 

 

 

The leaves of Wayfaring Tree are a bit downy, maybe to protect them against drying out.

 

 

Even when it rains...