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...

Cuckoo Flower

The Cuckoo Flower (Cardamine pratensis) appears just a bit earlier than the cuckoo and it grows under trees or along a walking track, in a grassy not too dry spot where it can get some sunshine. Here it brightens up a little wood near a small stream.

It belongs to the Brassicaceae family, like kale, rape and also most of the little white flowers you find now everywhere in flower (see Little white jobs). The four petals are slightly veined. 

You have to hurry to see it in flower, its season is short !

Sun Spurge

Sun Spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia) behaves according to its name. Its green-yellow umbels always turn towards the sun and it flowers at the first sunny day at the end of winter.

Here are two tiny little specimens in a dry meadow.

The bracteoles make a kind of saucer on which sit flowers of the same pale green colour.

The plants here below are much bigger, they grow on richer soil in a rapeseed field. Each carries several umbels. Many leaves have already fallen off, and the long reddish stems are visible.

The flowers are visited by busy small insects.

The flowers are characteristic for spurges, they look a bit strange.

In this enlargement you can see cyathiums, structures with glands. In Sun Spurge a cyathium looks like a small basket with four eggs sitting on its rim. In the middle of the eggs you can see a bunch of stamens with pollen. From each cyathium emerges a short stem with a kind of slightly flattened ball. This is the female 'flower', and it carries three styles. The big darker green ball below is a female 'flower' that is growing out into a fruit that contains ripening seeds.

Here a seed got stuck between two bracteoles. The pale spot on top of the seed is an elaiosome, a tasty appendix especially designed to attract ants. They are wild about it and they carry them with the attached seeds to their nest to feed their larvae. The seed is not eaten and germinates next year.

Cut-leaved Dead-nettle

Square stems are spreading on the soil in a corner of a vegetable garden or in a field. They carry small dented leaves with a purple tinge.

Cut-leaved Dead-nettle (Lamium hybridum) looks very much like its slightly bigger brother Red Dead-nettle, but the stems of this last one are more or less upright. Both spiecies grow in the same kind of environment. But, because one of them (the red) is much more common as the other one (the cut-leaved) there is a difference in their respective requirements. If not, both species would be common or one of them would disappear.

Hidden between the leaves there are tiny pink flowers.

Isopyrum

See here Isopyrum (Isopyrum thalictroides) just beginning to flower. Like many other plants, this year it has an early start. You should think yourself lucky when you can take its picture, it is a very rare species in Dordogne. Well, it may be overlooked sometimes, so small and ephemeral it is.

Everything about this plant is delicate, its fragile stems, the finely ciselated leaves, and the flowers like a small Wood Anemone. It grows exclusively in humid and not too sunny spots under trees, with a predilection for the bank of a small stream, like here. In some weeks everything of this plant will have disappeared from sight and only its roots will lie dormant until next spring.

Two-leaf Squill

In this picture is clearly visble whence comes its name : Two-leaf  Squill (Scilla bifolia). And it always a pleasure to find it somewhere in a wooded valley.