Male Orchid

It rains too much this month!

Here an insect is seeking shelter in a Male Orchid (Orchis mascula). Orchid flowers have, like other monocots, three sepals and three petals. The dorsal sepal and two petals folded together serve as an umbrella over the head of the fly. It is sitting on the third petal, a lip covered with darker specks to show the way to nectar, but it is not interested at all in food. The other two sepals are folded outward.

Male orchids typically grow in deciduous woods, and the flowers appear just before the new leaves on the trees prevent sunlight reaching the wood floor. Despite their strong purple color they are easy to overlook. The orchid leaves are dark green with brownish purple spots.

Chalk Milkwort

In general wild flowers of the same species are all the same color. Not here, this medley of white and blue in ameadow is Chalk Milkwort (Polygala calcarea) and it is a truly wild plant.






















The small flowers are well provided with adornments. The white frilly petal serves as a landing strip for butterflies and bees which have to put their proboscis between to blue wings to get nectar.

Western Spider Orchid

Since end of March there are flowering orchids in Trémolat. Here is the earliest, a Western Spider Orchid (Ophrys occidentalis). It is a small pale green plant, only 10 or 20 cm high. It is easy to crush it when you are looking for it.



On its velvety lip it has a clear spot, the mirror, which makes it look like a spider. At least, that’s what we humans think. Some bees believe it is another bee, sitting on a green flower. It even has eyes!

Great Horsetail

 A lot has changed since a hundred million years ago, but not those aliens.




They are sporophores of the Great Horsetail (Equisetum telmateia). During the Cretaceous several kinds of vascular plants already existed. (Not here in Dordogne, the greater part of modern France was below sea-level.) Like the dinosaurs most of them have become extinct or, at least, have changed a lot, but not the Equisetum-family. Today you can find horsetails which look virtually the same as their ancient ancestors.



The sporophores of the Great Horsetail do not have any chlorophyll. Later this spring the green, vegetative stems of this plant will appear.

Purple Toothwort

What is it ... purple under the poplars?


A mass of flowers amongst last year’s fallen leaves. It is the Purple Toothwort (Lathraea clandestina). A parasite living on the roots of poplar trees.















It is an underground plant, you see only flowers and, sometimes, the ends of branches coming above ground. Flower buds appear from between white scales.

Pine Processionary

Now the Pine processionaries (Thaumetopoea pytiocampa) get wanderlust. They leave the cotton candy, high up in a pine tree, where they have lived all winter, and descend to the wood floor, linked together, one after another.
 

Slowly the procession moves forward until it reaches a place where the earth is loose and warmed by the sun. There the caterpillars get together and dig in with rythmic movements, and start pupating underground.











Do you need to be an intelligent insect to show social behaviour like this? Not if you follow some simple rules of thumb. Like:

(1) When the days get longer and warmer, leave your nest and head for downwards.
(2) Cling to the tail of a colleague.
(3) If you can’t find a free tail, walk to a place where the earth smells better because it is warm and loose.
(4) If you cannot find a better smelling place, stop walking and start making rythmic lateral movements.
(5) If you discover a colleague that makes rythmic lateral movements, do the same, as close to him/her as you can, even if that means you have to release the tail you followed.
(6) If it gets dark (because you are covered with earth, or because the sun has set), stop moving.

No need to think, no need for a leader, no management problems...

Lesser Celandine

We need some spring ...


... and here's the Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria)!