Yellow Dead-nettle

This picture is taken at the end of winter. Yes, Snowdrops were still in flower. And there were also some rather elegant reddish leaves.

What did become of them?


See here.

Now they brighten up this somewhat sombre woodland. The Yellow Dead-nettle (Lamium galeobdolon subs. montanum) made a lot of new green sprouts and now it is in full bloom. It likes a soil rich in humus, like here under the Hornbeams of a little wooded valley, not far from a stream. If it finds the right circumstances it is a good ground-cover plant, its creeping stalks can cover quite a surface.

The verticillate flowers are yellow, the upper lip clear yellow and the lower lip spotted with darker yellow.

Corn Rocket

Warm coulours on this meadow on acidic soil. It is not only the evening sun, but also plants growing here. Only a few years ago this meadow was a cultivated field, but now it is for making hay, and some plants typical for cultures are still here. In the background it is Sheep's Sorrel (Rumex acetosella), and in the foreground you can see the yellow flowers of Corn Rocket (Bunias erucago).

Let us look from nearby.

At first sight Corn Rocket looks like any kind of mustard or rapeseed or cress, or, why not, Rocket. A Brassicaceae with many branches and pale yellow flowers. The leaves are edible but there are not many, only a little rosette that disappears when flowering starts.

The flowers leave no room for doubt, yes this is a member of the Brassicacea family.

The fruits are rather special. They are covered with irregular points, and it is hard as a stone.

Pale Madwort

Those tiny yellow flowers grow in a rather arid limestone field.

Pale Madwort (Alyssum alyssoides) is an annual plant and it is one of the first to flower in this habitat. It lives in groups, sometimes there are hundreds of small plants dispersed over a few square meters.

When the flowers open you can see their four petals in the shape of a cross, typical for Brassicaceae.

You are lucky if you find it, it has become rare in Perigord.

The white flowers are not a different species, at the end of flowering the petals turn pale and stick to the developing fruit.

Annual Bluegrass

Annual Bluegrass (Poa annua) grows nearly everywhere and it flowers nearly all year round.

It is tiny so you have to look near your feet to see it. It is what you call an ordinary grass and it likes human presence where. It grows on sidewalks, between the pavement of a road, in forgotten corners of gardens and towns, around abandoned buildings, on walking paths. And also elsewhere.

The flowering stalks come out of a bunch of disorderly green leaves; those are slightly folded lengthwise.

Here, early in the morning, the flowers begin to open.

The small spikelets covered in dewdrops when opening, look more like a work of abstract art than like an inflorescence. The glumes, the small scarious scales that protect the spikelets are pink in this plant, bur often the plant is completely green, flowers included. Rhe stamens begin to get out, after a few hours they will release pollen in the wind.

Green Hellebore

The color of the Green hellebore (Helleborus viridis) justifies its name, it is really of an intense dark, green, green and you can see it when other plants do not yet show many green sprouts.

It makes big clumps on the forest floor at the end of winter.

Even the flowers are green, little bells hanging between big compound palmate leaves.

When wide open, you can see about twenty stamens and in their centre some pistils a bit longer.

Green Hellebore, here beside a fallen Hornbeam tree, looks very much like the other hellebore that grows in Dordogne, Stinking Hellebore, with paler flowers and a really bad smell. Green Hellebore is not as common as this species, you'll find it only in the deepest parts of valleys, under trees, and mostly not far from water.

Lawn Daisy

Everywhere on lawns and also elsewhere, Lawn Daisy (Bellis perennis).

Little radiant suns, a circle of pink-tipped ligulate flowers around a golden heart of tubular flowers.

A stem with a single flowerhead with typical hairs on the bracts.

And this stem comes out of a small basal cluster of leaves flat on the soil. Hoarfrost? No problem at all!

A bit of cold does not matter. The flower simply closes.

Here the flower in the rays of an end of the afternoon sun, beginning to close for the night.

Common Groundsel

We are only half way February and some plants already made seeds.

This small Common Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) shows flower heads and buds but also already silvery fluff on ripe seeds. It is a very common plant and it flowers all year round. You can find it in vegetable gardens, ruderalised spots, in town, in agricultural fields, in fact nearly everywhere where the soil is fertile and there is not too much competition from other plants. Here, it choose to grow on top of an old wall covered in earth. The other spring flowers that grow here just start flowering; there are some blue spots of Birdeye Speedwell (Veronica persica) flowers still closed.

In every flower head there are quite a number of tubular flowers just sticking out from the tube formed by bracts with each a black point. The lobed leaves are curled at the rims and carry often hairs like spider webs.

Common Groundsel is a Ragwort, and it is poisonous for cattle but less poisonous than some other Ragwort species. Maybe because youdo not find it often in hay, and because grazing animals avoid eating it. Apparently it tastes bad.