False Oat-grass

On the side of a track grows this big grass that grows higher than the others.





False Oat-grass (Arrhenaterum elatius) grows nearly everywhere and here and there it can still be found flowering.





Above an ear in full bloom. The spikelets on thin stalks grow on right angles off the central axis, the culm, and every spikelet contains several flowers. The little wine-red things, like flags pending in the wind, are stamina. Because False Oat-grass is so big it is a bit less difficult than with other grasses to see the flowers in detail.





Here a spikelet seen from front. It holds several florets. In the foreground a monoecious flower. You can see a pair of feather-like stigma, one to the left and one to the right. From the center of the floret also two stamina protrude, thin stalks that carry those flag-like reddish anthers. Behind this floret another flower is hidden, a male one, from which you see mainly the two stamina. Above those flowers, pointing upwards, there is one of the bracts, glumes, that envelop the spikelet. Also every individual floret is surrounded by two scales, lemma and palea. The largest of the two, here visible pointing downwards with a long spike, is the lemma of the dioicious (male) flower.






Grasses are complicated...

Dog Rose

Wall-like growth, nearly impossible to get through, separates a small meadow and the surrounding woods. There are many brambles but also other bushes, some of them in flower. The big white umbels are of an Elder (Sambucus nigra) and the little pink spots are roses, to be more precise, Dog Roses (Rosa canina).




There are several species of wild roses in Dordogne and the Dog Roses is probably the most common of them. It flowres smell, they smell even very good, as it should be for a rose. The leaves, when you rub them between your fingers, do not have much smell.





Dog Roses flower in May and June with big simple flowers, pink or white (or both).





The petals are slightly indented and the sepals have long fringes. The leaves end with a point. Les feuilles sont pointues, smooth, or as here, just a bit downy.






Sometimes they stay on the plant until after the first frost.





The rosehips that grow during summer sometimes stay on the branches until the end of winter. At least, when they are not eaten by a bird or a fox.





It is a rose with long shoots that can get several metres long. The thorns are big and curved.





All year round wild roses are beautiful!

Knotted Clover

Everybody knows white and red clovers but there are so many other species in Dordogne! Often they are not really remarkable, because they are not big and not spectacular. Her a little pinkish one in a meadow, Knotted Clover (Trifolium striata).





In the picture below you can see it has longish flower-heads with light pink flowers and slightly hairy leaves. The calyxes of individual flowers are reddish with stripes. The veins of the tiny leaves are nearly straight.






You cannot exactly call the Knotted Clover stunning, but seen from nearby, well, it has some charms.

It is proper to clovers that withered flowers stay on the developing fruit. Knotted Clover is no exception, here below you can see them as brown spots on the flower-heads after flowering.






The pointed lobes of the calyxes make the flower-heads look like little hedgehogs.






Here you can see it amidst other clovers, a yellow species that is much more common, Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre). The two species grow in meadows, the yellow one nearly everywhere and the pink one only rarely found.

Field Pepperwort

In a cereal field a little plant keeps very straight in the first sunrays of this May morning.





Field Pepperwort (Lepidium campestre) is a member of the Brassicaceae family that can be found in cultivated fields and more ruderal places on dry and poor soil, especially on limestone. Little plants are vertical, larger ones have branches that stick out like on a candelabra.





The flowers do not amount to much, they are small, just four petals around a flat round silicula that soon becomes much larger than the flower itself.





The fruits sont slightly winged and they have a small depression on top.

Wood Spurge

Wood Spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides) grows, not surprising, in woods and it starts flowering long before the tree leaves start growing.





Spurges, at least those growing in France, have some characteristics in common. If you break a stem or leaf, a white latex oozes. And most Sprurges have typical yellow-greenish flowering umbels.






Wood Spurge is not an exception.






Here a 'flower' in detail. Round petal-like structures form a kind of saucer under some unusual machinery. Those two green-yellow half-circles are not petals, Wood Spurge does not have them, but bracts. And the little red ball inside is a not yet ripe fruit. It carries still the rests of pistils, two green lines. Left and right of this fruit, under two half-moon shapes, new flowers begin to open. And those half-moons? They are nectariferous glands. On top of all of this there are some stamen with pollen.





The rather blue-green leaves sometimes tinged with red look like they belong to another species.





And when, at least, the trees start making new leaves, Wood Spurge does not stop immediately making flowers.

Judas Tree

On the Perigordean 'causses', the limestone slopes and hilltops coverend with stunted Pubescent Oak trees,, you can see now flashes of fluorescent pink. The Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum) is a medeiterranean bush or small tree that seems to thrive here. It comes from gardens and it does very well in nature without becoming invasive.





It is a leguminose species that flowers abundantly with little butterfly-loke flowers that grow on older branches and the treetrunk.





The new sprouts only have leaves. But how pretty they are!






A solitary fluorescent pink bud on a thick branch looks like an extraterrestrian.






In summer, the Judas Trees makes luminous red pods.






And its autumn colours are not bad at all.

So, we can be happy it wants to live here.

Vernal Sedge

The first Sedge that flowers in spring is already nearly done. The stamina of Vernal Sedge (Carex halleriana) got rid of their pollen and they are nearly dried out by now; the stems that carried flowers now look like little brown clubs.





Vernal Sedge is a species from limestone soils and it likes dry and sunny spots.





It has two kinds of flowering stems. The larger ones have male flowers and sometimes some small ears with female flowers.






Below, more or less hidden between the leaves, are some female ears with white pistils on very thin stalks.






The dry grey leaves are from last year.