Look Out For PurpleToothwort in the Touraine Loire Valley

 Purple Toothwort Lathraea clandestina (Fr. Lathrée clandestine).

This curious spring flowering plant is to be found in damp woodland at the bottom of valleys and generally next to a stream. It's a parasite so needs to be attached to the tree roots of willow, alder, poplar, oak or hazelnut. It has no chlorophyll of its own and takes all its nutrients from its host tree.

In the springtime it sends up small tight rosettes of pigment free white fleshy leaves, which because of their resemblance to molars give the plant its English name. This above ground part gives you no hint of the much more substantial rhizome part that remains underground, often weighing several kilos.

The long hooded flowers, which seem to come directly from the ground, are a deep purple and appear  in the spring. Its distribution is basically franco-iberian, along the Atlantic coast, and from the Loire Valley to the Pyrenees in the south-west of France. Other pockets where the plant occurs are probably the result of accidental introductions on tree roots. It is rare enough in its natural distribution to be protected everywhere except the Charentes, where it is abundant.