Sickle Leaf Spurge

Another plants that accompanies agriculture.

In cereal fields on dry calcareous soils you can find this small Sickle Leaf Spurge (Euphorbia falcata). Like all Spurges it has a white sticky latex that comes out when you break a stem or leaf. Because agriculture without herbicides and fertilizer has disappeared, it has become rare in Perigord, but in some places you can still find Sickle Leaf Spurge.

Spurge flowers are small and green or yellow, in this case well hidden inside heart-shaped bracts.

White Lace Flower

Early morning in summer, a light fog.

Times ago local farmers grew tobacco in this field, but it has been abandoned for many years. Since then some woody plants had time enough to grow big, like those Junipers  (Juniperus communis). Between the Junipers wild flowers found a good spot and they flower in abundance. Unusual amounts of them grow here, purple Creeping Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys), yellow Jenny's Sronecrop (Sedum rupestre) and White Lace Flower (Orlaya grandiflora).

For the White Lace Flower 2014 has been a very good year. Now the flowering season is nearly over and little fruits covered with little hooks can be found in every spot where a month ago the plants were in full bloom.

Here and there a single umbel in flower can still be seen.

Common Andryala

In this cereal field grow many wild flowers.

In this corner the orange poppies jump to the eye, and also a mass of yellow flower heads. Two plants that like ruderalized spots, like this field that has been laboured but that has not been tidied up since.

The plant with yellow flowers is the Common Andryala (Andryala integrifolia). It flowers through summer with many lemon-coloured flower heads.

Stalks and leaves are covered with felt-like hairs.

Single Yellow-head

Normally it is not a single flowerhead you find where the Single Yellow-head (Inula montana) grows. It is a quite conspicuous plant with its luminous yellow flowers.

Even this year, when the grass in the calcareous meadows that are its favourite spot, has grown quite high and dense.

Its stems and leaves are covered in grey hairs that give them a velvety look.

Greater Butterfly Orchid

If you want to see this beautiful orchid in flower, you'll have to hurry. The flowering period of the Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha) is nearly over.

Here is one, maybe the last of this year, hidden between grasses.

Carrot Burr-Parsley

A cultivated field on poor and stony soil. There are not much cereals, but wild flowers are abundant.

The farmer did not use much fertilizer and weedkiller and that's why here grow plants that have disappeared elsewhere.Like the Carrot Burr-Parsley (Caucalis platycarpos), that flowers and produces fruit before harvest and the arrival of hot and dry summer months.

Here, in the last rays of the evening sun, some umbels with fruits covered with small hooks.


 

Amethyst Broomrape

At this time of the year broomrapes emerge everywhere. They are plants without chlorophyl with whitish or reddish stems and sometimes a touch of purple. As their name indicates already, they are parasitic plants, not only on broom, but also on other species. Every species of broomrape has its own preferences concerning its host.

The Amethyst Broomrape (Orobanche amethystea) grows on Field Eryngo (Eryngium campestre). To the left two broomrapes, and at the right a leaf of the eryngo.

The flowers are tubular with a trilobed lower lip. On the top of the upper lip you see  small glandular hairs.