Many-seeded Slender Tare

This is a very tiny vetch, after flowering it is nearly invisible, unless you really look for it in a calcareous meadow. Many-seeded Slender Tare (Ervum gracile) has a rather long name for such a small plant. 

With some difficuly you can see it is infested by aphids. There were three or two flowers on every flower stalk but only one developed into a seed pod. In this species often the flowerstalk ends in a little point above the flowers or pods.


Two weeks ago it was still in full bloom, with slender curved tendrils.

Now the pods develop. They are a bit transparent and you can see there is a row of several seeds, yes, it is many-seeded for such a small vetch.

 

Dewdrups glisten in the morning sun on leaves, tendrils and seedpods.

 

 

 

Yellow Vetch

In a flowering meadow grows this Yellow Vetch (Vicia lutea) in large amounts. In fact it is not yellow at all, its flowers are white. It has tendrils to climb sunwards in grasses and other plants.

You can see there are many insect visitors. Like many other vetches it has black spots on its stipules. Those spots contain a sugary substance attractive to insects, especially ants.

Also Red Soldier Beetles (Rhagonycha fulva) are fond of Yellow Vetch. Many of them gather on it to meet a partner to mate.

Talking about nuptials, between the flower also hides a male Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis) and he carries a parcel between its legs, his wedding present.

He is looking for a female to bring her a prey wrapped in silk. If he comes without a gift, she will eat him immediately without giving him time to make love to her. The present will keep her occupied while he couples with her, and with some luck he will get away with it !

Two vetches

The first thing you see of Coronille minima is its colour. This is what you call yellow! This vetch is a mediterranean species and it has no English name.

It is a perennal plant that grows in dense clumps covered with yellow flower crowns. This year they are bigger as usual, it has rained so much that even in the arid places it prefers it grew bigger and bigger.

You nearly cannot see the leaves, there are so many flower heads! Every leaf consists of about a dozen small folioles, and they are thick, as if they are cut from a sheet of handicraft foam.

Apparently the same type of foam has been used to cut the leaves of another Coronilla, the Scorpion Vetch (Coronilla scorpioides) here below. They are the same greyish-green, but bigger and more irregular.

Its flowers are small and its fruits are long. In fact they look very much like a scorpions tail.

Here it grows in a cultivated field, but you can meet it also in a dry calcareous meadow.

Dwarf Spurge

Dwarf Spurge (Euphorbia exigua) is the smallest Spurge in Dordogne. Some full-grown plants are not bigger than two centimeters. It grows in calcareous meadows, especially in spots where vegetation is sparse and the soil is visible.

The species is rather diverse. Often the plants are greyish green, but sometimes it is more yellowish green with a reddish stem, as here. This exemplar is really big, it looms large above the tiny 'Controversial Sandworts' (Arenaria controversa) around it.

This year it is abundant, maybe because of the rain. Here some individuals from a carpet of thousands, each one with its flower head.

Common Vetch

See here the Common Vetch (Vicia segetalis). It is not difficult at all to find it, even if it is not that common. In many grassy spots its butterfly-like flowers abound. It grows also in cereal fields. Many grasslands in Perigord in former times were cereal fields, so maybe that is an explanation.

Every leaf is divided in a dozen or so of smaller folioles and ends in a twisted tendril. The plant climbs in grass stems and other stalks and attaches itself with those tendrils

On the left in the photograph you see a vetch with smaller and narrower folioles, this is another species and it is called Hairy Tare (Vicia hirsuta).

Tuberous Comfrey

The Tuberous Comfrey (Symphytum tuberosum) likes shadowy spots not far from water, under trees not far from a stream. It is never on its own, it lives in groups.

It flowering season ends when the trees get their new leaves, so it can enjoy the light coming through the nude branches early in spring.

The pale yellow bell-shaped flowers are visited by bumble-bees and bees.

Mirror Orchid

Surprise!  A Mirror Orchid (Ophrys speculum) in Perigordian rain. Kingfisher blue, sunflower yellow, chocolate brown...

A bit like a drown dog, however.

This vividly coloured tiny orchid normally grows in Portugal, Morocco, Lybia or other countries well South of France. It is only very rarely found here. In all of the Dordogne département may be three plants a year.

Like many Ophryses or (bee orchids) it needs a pollinating insect to reproduce, in this case a kind of wasp Dasycolia ciliata. The Mirror orchid gives of a substance that smells like the pheromones of this wasp. And the border of its lip is covered in brown hairs like a wasp and its form and colour makes it look really like a female Dasycolia. The orchid does what it can to attract a male Dasycolia, that should try to copulate with the flower and thus collect pollen to take it to the next flower and fecundate it.


Alas, it does not work here. Dasycolia ciliata does not live in France.

But this flower grows in France. How comes? Good question. More answers possible.

(1)
Mirror orchid seeds arrived here when adhering to shoes or car tires of someone who passed his holiday in the Mediterrenean region during fruit season of those orchids. Well, this is possible, be not very probable in this case.

(2)
Mirror Orchid seeds are taken by winds high up in the atmosphere over a great distance. This is possible, orchid seeds are very small and light.


(3)
The Dasycolia wasp came to France without being seen, due to global warming. Or the Mirror Orchid found another pollinisator. Theoretically this should be possible, but then, there should be fecundated plants with seeds. And there are not.


In fact, the Mirror orchids we find here are always on their own, this is an indication the plant does not disperse seeds around it and there are no new plants coming from seed around their parents.

So it is probable that every exemplar  is born from a seed that has traveled far and that Mirror Orchids do nor reproduce at all in France. Many seeds need to travel to make at least some fall in the right soil in the right spot.

Well, Mirror Orchids like warm and sunny calcareous meadows, and climate change warms up French calcareous meadows. So, maybe we are going to find more of this orchid. And, we don't know, maybe its pollinator goes up North also...