Tassel Hyacinth

This crab spider does not make a web, but sits in wait for its prey on a flower. When an insect visits, in search of nectar, it is jumped upon and killed. Here she (yes, it is a she, males are much smaller) choose a Tassel Hyacinth (Muscari comosum).

The Tassel Hyacinth is now in flower on roadsides and in meadows. It is a bulbous plant, like the hyacinths that grow in gardens. On the picture below you can see it has two kinds of flowers. Below are the purplish-brownish fertile flowers. The top of the plant is attractive to insects (and spiders) due to the strong blue color of the infertile flowers.

Unfurling

In most vascular plants the young leaves are folded or they form a cylinder that unrolls. Ferns are different, their fronds are uncurling spirals. Now is the time to look for them. The following two should be easy to find.


The Tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) grows on steep and stony slopes in the shadow of trees.
















And the Common Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) covers the forest floor under oaks and chestnuts.

Two Bee Orchids

Here are the smallest orchids to be found around Trémolat, only a few centimetres high. Take care where you are walking! They grow both in dry places with sparse and short vegetation. In a clearance in a open oak wood, but also in the kind of field which does not look beautiful at all and where people burn their rubbish or exercise their motor bike.

Both are from the genus of bee orchids, so called because the flowers look like bees sitting on a flower. At least, male bees from some species think the resemblance striking; they try to copulate with the flowers and thus take the pollen from one flower to the other.



The first one is the Yellow Bee Orchid (Ophrys lutea).


















And here you see the Dark Bee Orchid (Ophrys sulcata).

Those mediterranean species have their northern limit in this part of France. Maybe because they can’t stand a colder climate, maybe because their pollinators can only survive in milder weather.

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.