Stemless Thistle

In some places, when summer is nearly over, you can find a small thistle between the low grass. The leaves are as prickly as those of bigger thistles!
The Stemless Thistle (Cirsium acaule) grows at ground level in calcareous meadows.

It is stemless...

... or nearly so.

Also visible in the picture are the fluffy seeds.

They catch the light of the evening sun.

Brazilian Waterweed

The water in the river Dordogne got warmer during this hot summer. For a number of aquatic plants this created the right circumstances for an explosion of new vegetation. Here, just above a dam, the river is calm and two different kinds of Waterweed weave their snake-like shoots.

The big snakes are shoots from Brazilian Waterweed (Egeria densa) and the small snakes are from Curly Waterweed (Lagarosiphon major). Both come from hotter parts of the world, The first one from Latin America, and the other from Southern Africa. May be they escaped from an aquarium or came along with a ship. Anyhow, now they are here and thriving. Or should you say, invading?

The shoots of Brazilian Waterweed are nearly elegant in the slightly troubled water.

And yes, it is in full bloom. The flowers float on the water surface on long thin stems. In France, Brazilian Waterweed only makes male flowers and breeds by loosing its shoots. They float with the river or are taken by ducks and swans.

Woolly Distaff-thistle

A wall of thistles in a stony field. The farmer has given up growing something here this year, the corn has not even germinated. It was too dry and too hot. He did not even worry about herbicides.

So much the better for those Woolly Distaff-thistles (Carthamus lanatus). You don't often see them in such large quantities, in fact, you nearly never see them, they are becoming very rare. They look nearly dead, but no. They are well adapted to dry circumstances, only the upper part of the plant is still green.


Nevertheless, in another field, a cereal field after harvest, grow also some plants.

Here, they are greener and still show some yellow flowers. The Woolly Distaff-thistle is very prickly, its bracts and leaves are tough and spiky, not at all soft as wool.

The seeds are rather big and they carry a crown of scales.

There are a lot of them in this stony field. Are they going to give new plants next spring, or are the voles going to eat them all?

'Beggar's Ticks Dodder'

Dodders are parasitic plants. They don't have roots nor leaves, and their thin stems garland around their host plants. And they suck the saps of those. Let's call this one 'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' (Cuscuta scandens) because it often seems to grow on Beggar's Ticks (Bidens frondosa).

It is considered as an invasive plant, like the plant it has chosen to grow on here, for that matter. The Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), with its big leaves is a serious pest in many parts of France.'Beggar's Ticks Dodder' is still quite uncommon in Perigord, but its numbers are increasing. It grows in some places on the Dordogne banks, and the river helps it to go elsewhere.

Many little white flowers will give many round seeds.

St Bernard Lily

A white cloud under the Pine trees...

Thousands of little white flowers open now. The St Bernards Lily (Anthericum ramosum) is in full bloom. They are not always so many, quite often you find only a few plants together.

It is a bulbous plant, with thin stems, grassy leaves and delicate flowers.

It is not really a Lily but looks much like it. At least, it has a bulb and six petals and parallel-nerved leaves.

'Truncate Selfheal'

There are not that many flowers in chestnut woods, but sometimes there are.  Here, among the green leaves of very young trees a Selfheal. It has no English name, so let us call it 'Truncate Selfheal' (Prunella hastifolia).

It is difficult to see in the image, but in fact it has truncate leaves.

However, the big blue flowers do like some sunshine. This one grows in an open space between the trees.

Broadleaf Helleborine

You easily miss it. Even if it is a rather big plant, until 80 cm high. Broadleaf Helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) blends well into its environment, it grows in the shade of trees and has rather inconspicuous colours.

But it is a beauty, when you look from nearby!

Every plant is different, even if the flowers are always some shade of green, red and purple with a touch of yellow.


It flowers from the second half of June to well into July. This year it will not go on flowering for long, it is too hot and too dry.