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.

Greater Burdock

Here we are in a plantation of young poplars not far from the Dordogne river.
In the background some coloured spots can be seen, it is blue plastic the owner wrapped around his young tree trunks to protect them against hungry roe deer. You can consider poplar plantations as a kind of nuisance because they destroy wetlands where otherwise many interesting wild plants would grow, that are now replaced by common ruderal plants. Like Burdocks. Here is a Greater Burdock (Arctium lappa) in winter attire. Well, you can't say it is uninteresting.

It is a majestic growth, because of its size of more than a metre high and its elegantly curved bows of dried flower heads.

The dried flower heads carry little hooks, and they are really appropriate to annoy your other children by putting them intheir hair. Nearly every child knows...

Montpellier Maple

In this deciduous forest in a winter fog all trees have lost their leaves, a small Oak excepted. At its right two slender tree trunks touch. Those are Montpellier Maples (Acer monspessulanum). A species that grows on some calcareous hillsides bur not everywhere.

No way to be mistaken, there are not that many trees that make so many small branches. They are mostly opposed and in other seasons carry small trilobed leaves.

In April Montpellier Maple makes small bundles of hanging flowers, and at the same time new leaves open.

No pollen-gatherer can be seen in this picture, but normally they are there, the flowers are very attractive for them.

Later on the flowers develop into winged fruits, called samaras. Here they are, in an autumn rain.

Hoarfrost

Nothing really special, this meadow with a bit of ruderalisation here and there. But some fog and hoarfrost changes everything.

Tor Grass (Brachypodium rupestre) takes the place of other grasses where the soil becomes a bit richer in nutrients.

Last summer's dead stems and leaves show a lot of colour compared to other grasses, and now a tiny white border of hoarfrost adds a little extra.


Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) can grow in any spot where a seeds falls into loose and fertile soil, also in this meadow where wild boar sometimes dig the soil.

Withered flower heads and leaves are still beautiful, even when they are not anymore alive.


The fog lifts and sunshine comes through.

Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) is not a delicate plant, but you can say today it shows some refinement.

This bramble, a common Blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), shows its fiery colours against the light. This will not be for long, if the cold and frosty nights go on it will take a more subdued colour.

Polypodies

A magnificent fern grows on an old Ash-tree on the banks of the Dordogne. It is a Polypody, but which one? There are three species in Perigord and sometimes a hybrid between two of them is found. The species are very much alike. To be sure of your identification you have to look at the sores (the lids of the sporangia) under a microscope et count the cells. Well, in the field you normally don't carry a microscope.

Hybrids are often polyploids - the number of chromosomes has doubled or tripled - and thus the organs (leaves, flowers) can be much larger than those of the parents. This one is really big, it has fronds up to 70 cm. So probably it is the Hybrid Polypody (Polypodium x mantoniae).

It has other characteristics of its presumed parents. The big pinnate leaves are long triangles with toothed margins as in the Intermediate Polypody (Polypodium interjectum). The leaves are planar, the pinnae - the segments of the leaves - are a bit hanging in the picture but they are basically all in two dimensions as in the Common Polypody (Polypodium vulgare).


In this fallen tree lives one of the two parents, Common Polypody, as in an apartment building with several floors.

They are rather small and the fronds are long with parallel margins.

Often Polypodies grow on trees, but you can find them also on the forest floor. Or maybe this one lives on a dead trunk hidden under fallen leaves? Possibly this is an Intermediate Polypody (Polypodium interjectum) considering the shape of the leaves, slightly triangular with the basal pinnae uplifted. But this is just a guess!

Burr Cucumber

Burr Cucumber (Sicyos angulata) is an invasive plant that loves summer sun and humidity, two things abundantly available on the Dordogne river banks. This plant from North America can be found in the West of Aquitaine since about fifty years and, following the rivers, it makes progress in the East. Slowly, in 2010 it had not yet arrived in Bergerac. But now there are also Burr Cucumbers in Coux et Bigaroque and maybe also further away.

It is a kind of monster, its creepers can reach more than 8 meters away. It covers the river banks and their vegetation, and it climbs...

... and climbs. In fact, it thrives like a cucumber or a pumpkin on the compost heap. As it should be for a member of the Cucurbitaceae family.

Until now there has not been a little morning frost this year, so Burr Cucumber goes on flowering.

It is not easy to find beauty in it, it is a messy plant, with its unkempt creepers and disheveled leaves that grow in any direction. But this is also a question of taste, is n't it?

The star-like fruits are festive, anyhow, like too-early christmas tree baubles.

In spite of its name the fruits do not look at all like cucumbers, nor are they edible. By contrast the leaves resemble much the leaves of a kitchen cucumber plant.

Common Michaelmas Daisy

Like dirty snow too early in the year. The banks of the Dordogne are covered in a mass of tiny white flowers. Common Michaelmas Daisy (Symphyotrichum x salignum) is an American and it looks like it is happy to be in France.

It colonizes the banks of rivers. It takes only a few years to cover a whole surface with dense and chaotic vegetation, by means of its rhizomes that go everywhere. An invasive species is supposed to make life difficult for indigenous species, thus Common Michaelmas Daisy is considered to be an invasive. Since 200 years it lives in France, but only recently it spreads really fast. Why? Maybe because the long and warm autumns of the last few years helped it grow and flower during a long time? Should you call it a pest? That would be exaggerated, or?

Large stalks stand up or lay down, here they are draped over a dead branch. They carry loose clusters of composite flowers.

 Ligulate flowers are whitish with often a tinge of pale lilac, and the tubular flowers, nearly invisible in the image, are yellow. The stem is more or less hairy.

In the background you see the trunks of some Ash-leaved Maples (Acer negundo), a very common tree in the river woodlands of the Dordogne. This one is also an invasive species of northamerican origins.