Greater knapweed

Greater knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) can survive in dry places. Its purple flowers contrast with the yellow grass.

Like with other members of the Daisy family (the Compositaea), what looks like a flower is in fact a flower head which contains several individual florets. Those are surrounded by a number of bracts which form an involucre. Here below those are visible as brown-edged scales under the flower head.











In Greater Knapweed all florets are tubular, those on the outside are somewhat larger. The ants enjoy!

Hart's Tongue Fern

The black stripes in this picture taken into the light are the spores of Hart's Tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium). They grow as a brown, velvety, mass which contains thousands of them, on the backside of the fronds.

Hart's tongue Fern doesn't like dry places, horizontal surfaces and sunlight, so it grows on slopes in the shadow of trees, often near a small stream or source.

In spring young fronds emerge from between the old ones.

Blue Lettuce

A hoverfly found something to eat in this fragile blue flower.



It's a Blue Lettuce (Lactuca perennis). It likes warm and sunny places, so you only find it on well-exposed hillsides and fields. The flowers open only when it is sunny.














The rosettes look like those of the common Dandelion, but the leaves are a bit more incised. Like those, and also like the garden lettuce it has a white latex.

The shadow of another insect.

Wild Madder

Here's another member of the family of Rubiaceae. In Perigord the Wild Madder (Rubia peregrine) grows nearly everywhere where there are trees and bushes. Here it found a fence to carelessly drape its garlands around.

The small yellow-green flowers are like stars.


















The verticillate leaves stay on in winter and disappear only in spring. Some black berries of last year have not yet been eaten by birds. No, it is not what you call a tidy plant!

Great Hedge Bedstraw

The Great Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo) grows in hedges but also on roadsides and hayfields. After mowing the grass and some rain the white clouds will re-appear.

Like other bedstraws this one has tiny, star-shaped flowers. Insects search them for nectar.


















All bedstraws and other members of the Rubiaceae-family have verticillate leaves. In the Great Hedge Bedstrow they are now hidden under the great mass of flowers, but in spring they looked like this.

Crab spider

Flower crab spiders sit in wait on a flower to catch insects.


Here one of the two most conspicuous species, a Thomisus onustus on a Pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis). When it has chosen its flower it can sit here for days, its large front paws opened to 'receive' its prey: every day a fresh one. Because it does not flee but sits motionless it is easy to photograph.

Yellow Iris

In shallow streams and ponds those long, swordlike leaves emerge from the water. When back-lit the conductive tissues are visible, the separations between the superposed long vascular cells show as darker spots.



They are the leaves of the Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus). The spider has put its long legs into a prolongation of its long body to make itself less conspicuous.

The flowers look very much like the irises found in gardens.