Saxifrage

Jos Verelst

@josverelst1671619284 · 10 May 2022

Saxifrage

#naturephotography

The Stone Crushing Family is a large family and its members are often very similar. Most species grow in mountainous regions, on and between rocks. Because of that place of growth, Pliny, the Ancient Roman scientist, thought that the plant could break stones. Herbaceous plants, if the stone breaks, are not capable of doing so. Some of the larger well-known brothers from the same family are the Eel and Gooseberries and the Peasant Jasmine.

Only a few of these herbs are also found naturally in Flanders. In the absence of rocks and mountains, we have to deal with fewer species here. One of these species is the Tubersaxifrage.

It wears a nice, fine white flower, and you can find it mainly on dikes and along forest roads. In earlier times, when hayfields were still a common phenomenon, saxifrage was as common as celandine in much of Europe. The tubers to which the species is named remained untouched in the soil, even though the foliage was mowed away at the top.

Because hayfields are plowed, torn and sown today, just like fields, the globules are lost. Mows more often, and therefore earlier, so plants that have traditionally grown in hay land do not have time to ripen their seeds. For example, most hayland species, both plants and the animals that live on those plants, come in close shoes. That is why we only find these species in other places today: dikes, roadsides and sunny forest paths.