Walking From La Guerche

On Thursday 9 November I joined Joel and Denise, Helene and Dominique to walk 10 kilometres from La Guerche, in the wind and rain. With sheltering from the rain breaks it took two and three quarter hours.

A surveyors' marker on the side of an agricultural track.

False Turkey Tail Stereum hirsutum (Fr. Stérée hirsute) on a fallen birch branch.

A rather rotund solitary sheep sheltering under a solitary pear tree in a field watches us go by.

This is some sort of Agaricus sp mushroom, and I think it might be Great Wood Mushroom A. langeai. Last year I found a single mushroom in this spot, this year it is a colony of tens of mushrooms.

Sheltering from a heavy rain shower at about the halfway mark.

Walking through the forest near Rond du Chene.

A sacred well known as the Fontaine de Prélong. It is a spring protected by a small building made of chunks of flint.

Offerings on the well.

This is a Tremella sp. I assume it is Golden Ear T. aurantia (Fr. Trémelle orangée), as it appears to be feeding off False Turkey Tail.

This is the ancient border between Poitou and Touraine. In the 14th century where I am standing, in Poitou, would have been English territory and across the valley in the distance the Touraine was French.

A big patch of Ivy had been brought down by the recent storms and was blocking the track.

New Guide to the ZNIEFF in the Sud Touraine

The long awaited (well, by me at any rate) guide to the Zones Naturelles d'intéret écologique, faunistique et floristique du Sud Touraine is finally out. It is great!

 The front cover of the guide.

The guide is the result of 5 years of work by a small team led by Francois Lefebvre, ably assisted by Jean-Claude Jacques. I contributed some photos and helped with the field work and biodiversity surveying. Over the life of the project Francois had 3 interns who got a glimpse of real working life as an ecologist as part of their university training. My friends Alain Chartier, Marc Fleury and Jean Pelle all contributed photos and provided lots of historical knowledge of the sites. Yohann Sionneau contributed his specialist knowledge of the River Claise and its tributaries. Olivier Lorain did the graphic design and printing. The book is dedicated to the memory of botanist extraordinaire Francois Botté, and there are a number of other ecologists, botanists, entomologists and naturalists involved who I never got to meet.

Open at the chapter for La Cabane.

The guide was produced because Francois Lefebvre recognised that we have something rather special in the Sud Touraine. Our chalky limestone means that water has carved out numerous valleys and natural cavities which have been subsequently modified by man. The climate is sub-Mediterranean, and we are on the northern limits of the distribution for many southern species. The proximity to the Brenne means that we also have inland wetland habitats and the species associated with them. In a relatively small area we have a remarkable diversity of species. Consequently there are today 28 sites identified and classified at national level as ZNIEFF, acknowledging their exceptional interest in terms of the flora and/or fauna present.

The back of the guide, which says: "The Sud Touraine, gâtine* country, with its great residual stands of forest, and its numerous valleys cut into the Turonian chalk still exhibits a number of preserved habitats. Wet heathland, chalk mounds, underground cavities, natural grasslands at the base of valleys...These are the places, often a bit hidden and difficult to access, that we want to introduce you to, across 28 sites classed as ZNIEFF, real reservoirs of local biodiversity."

 *Gatine is land that has low nutrient, heavy, poorly draining clay soil. This heath and poor natural grassland surrounded by forest was traditionally used to pasture goats and sheep, until the 19th century when it began to be cultivated.

Here is the official blurb, from Jean-Claude, and translated by me:

The Patrimoine Vivant en Claise Tourangelle (PVCT) association has spent 5 years updating or creating the 28 reports describing the most remarkable natural environments in southern Touraine and listing some of the emblematic animal and plant species they shelter.

These reports, illustrated with location maps and numerous color photos, have just been published: Les ZNIEFF du Sud Touraine - Zones Naturelles d'intérêt Écologique, Faunistique et Floristique. Les Cahiers de la Claise n°13 (see cover photo).

This 159-page publication is on sale for €14 at the Grand-Pressigny Tourist Office and at the "Le Petit Fabien" bookshop in Preuilly-sur-Claise.

It can also be ordered from PVCT (7 Grande Rue, 37350 Le Grand Pressigny) with a cheque for 20€ (14€ + 6€ postage).

If you are interested in the nature of the Sud Touraine I highly recommend you get a copy of this guide. And keep an eye out for announcements from me on FB that there will be an outing to one or more of the sites next year.

An outing for the general public on behalf of Botamyco37 in May 2023 to La Cabane, Bossay sur Claise, one of the sites featured in the guide.

In order to have a site declared as a ZNIEFF the owner needs to be sympathetic to the idea of protecting nature. The aim is to raise awareness and offer a limited level of protection to the site. For example, should the owner decide to sell and a new owner wished to develop the site they would be unlikely to get planning permission.

Things are Changing in France

When we first moved to France 15 years ago sourcing affordable peanut butter was challenging. The supermarkets only stocked one brand, Skippy (which is American), and you found it in the 'weird foreign foods' section. If I remember correctly it was nearly €6 for a 340 g jar, and only came in smooth. French people in those days definitely didn't like peanut butter. The spread of choice, if you are French, is Nutella (or own brand knock off versions of chocolate hazelnut spread). We don't like Nutella, but luckily we have good Dutch friends who were very generous with their regular supply of crunchy pindakaas in big jars.

At my local SuperU.

Then we discovered Noz and to our joy, they frequently had all sorts of end of line, overstock and liquidation peanut butter, for perfectly reasonable prices. So nowadays our approach is to stock up at Noz every couple of weeks.

However, for various reasons, we haven't had the opportunity to shop at Noz for a while, so the peanut butter situation was getting desperate. The other day, on my regular supermarket run, I checked out the peanut butter. I was quite surprised to see, in a small provincial supermarket, four brands of peanut butter, two of which proudly proclaimed they were made in France (albeit from American peanuts)! And they were no longer in the 'weird foreign foods' section, but in the 'spreads and jam section'. They were all smooth though (except for the Skippy, which came in both smooth and crunchy).

Hanbury Gardens

Hanbury Gardens, or to give them their Italian name, Giardini Botanici Hanbury, are on a small peninsula on the Ligurian coast of Italy, near Ventimiglia. They are managed by the University of Genoa.

They were created by Sir Thomas Hanbury, a wealthy British Quaker and businessman, in the grounds of the Palazzo Orengo, which he bought in 1867. On the team were his brother Daniel, a pioneering vegetarian and pharmacologist; the German landscape gardener Ludwig Winter, who is largely responsible for the look of the gardens and the planting combinations; and other leading German botanists, explorers and scientists who over the years documented the garden, producing a plant list of 5800 species and managing the distribution of seeds and plant material to other gardens and interested parties. 

Palazzo Orengo through the trees.

Winter in particular was influential in introducing palms and other exotic species to the Ligurian coast. Now we think of this type of planting on the Mediterranean as commonplace, sensible and unremarkable but in the mid-19th century it was radical, unexpected and daring. Born in Prussia, he was Head Gardener at the Tuileries in Paris when the outbreak of war between the Prussians and the French forced him to move to Italy. Hanbury hired him and he worked there for five years, establishing the garden. Then he bought his own estate and became a horticultural consultant and nurseryman to many wealthy landowners along the French and Italian Riviera and Cote d'Azur. He had a particular interest in Acacia species as well as palms, figs and roses.

There were several stunning agaves in the garden.

Daniel Hanbury's botanical collection is now in the care of Kew Gardens. 

Thomas Hanbury died in 1907, but after the First World War, his daughter-in-law Dorothy, who came from a family of garden designers, took the garden on and continued in the same vein. Sadly, during the Second World War the gardens were badly damaged as they were at first confiscated because they belonged to foreigners, then occupied by troops, and finally bombed and looted. Although Dorothy returned to live there after the War, the task of restoring the gardens was too great for her to manage and in 1960 Lady Dorothy Hanbury sold the gardens to the Italian State, in order to protect them from speculative building developments.

There were some impressive cacti too.

Nowadays, after nearly 40 years of extensive restoration by the University of Genoa, half of the estate's 18 hectares are open to the public, the gardens are a nature reserve listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and regularly get listed in the Top Ten most beautiful gardens in Italy.

The citrus grove has only fairly recently been rediscovered, after having been presumed destroyed. It has examples of rare species.

The notable collections include agaves, aloes, Australian flora, salvias, olives, palms, succulents, euphorbias, rare fruits, citrus and certain conifers.

Sir Thomas Hanbury's tomb is in the little Indian pavilion that you can see the roof of in this photo.

We were very keen to visit them when we came through the area in June this year, and were not disappointed. They are an outstanding example of a preserved historic garden. Ventimiglia itself was a madhouse, but Hanbury Gardens are precisely the haven such gardens should be. We visited in the late afternoon on a very hot and humid day, and there were barely half a dozen other visitors. The plants themselves are astonishing, and the views very fine. We highly recommend you put it on your list if you are staying on the French-Italian Mediterranean border.

This pavilion was a very pleasant place to sit for a while.

The site is extensive and there is a 100 metre drop in elevation from the entrance to the gardens at the top down to the sea at the bottom. Paths and steps are well maintained, even so, once you've walked down you have to walk back up again. And wear sensible shoes, which applies to any historic garden visit.

Further Reading: The Garden's official website, in English. https://giardinihanbury.com/en

 A jacaranda flowering in the Northern Hemisphere June.

Some Fungi in the Forest of Preuilly

A couple of weeks ago I had to go to the Forest of Preuilly to collect fungi for the Fete de la Nature held on 4-5 November. Here are a few of the species I found.

Magpie Inkcap Coprinopsis picacea (Fr. Coprin pie) is a species that grows in groups in the grass along forest tracks. It is easy to identify because of the contrast between the dark cap colour and the white scales.

The Forest of Preuilly supplies high quality timber to the building trade, so there are always piles of felled trees at the side of the road. Sometimes they have interesting fungi growing on them.

An early stage False Turkey Tail Stereum hirsutum (Fr. Stérée hirsute).

Well developed False Turkey Tail.

The Split-gill mushroom Schizophyllum commune (Fr. Schizophylle commune) is probably a species complex. I'd never seen the species before and the first thing Didier said to me when I showed it to him to identify was that lots of people are allergic to it, and the spores can cause pulmonary disease.

Mature False Turkey Tail ready to spore and white with spores underneath. Once the spores have been released it will go orangey brown underneath.

Split-gilled mushroom is quite attractive to flies, ants and other insects. The flesh is tough and elastic, and in some cultures it is used as chewing gum.

The Split-gill mushroom is often the first fungus to colonise a newly dead (or felled) tree. Despite being possibly the most widely distributed fungus species in the world, it appears to be in regression, due to fungicides and the reduction in dead wood in modern forestry systems.

False Turkey Tail. The diagnostic 'hairs' on the upperside can be easily seen on this fresh young specimen. This is another global species that seems to be native to Europe, America and Australasia.

A Sad Ruin

When we were house hunting, back in 2006, we looked at a former boulangerie in rue Chaumont-Patin in Preuilly sur Claise. We thought seriously about buying it and it had many attractive features. But it was also a bit of a rabbit warren with many levels and eccentricities, and in the end we rejected it on the grounds it was really too big for us and there was too much work to do on it to restore it. We dodged a bullet, because as we now know, rue Chaumont-Patin is subjected to an endless stream of heavy vehicles taking a shortcut between two autoroutes.

The old boulangerie photographed on 3 November.

Nowadays the old boulangerie Gillard as it is known is in a sorry state. It has lost its roof, and that always leads to a very rapid deterioration in a building. It is now virtually a ruin, and a dangerous one at that. There is a distinct risk of the building collapsing into the busy main road it is located on.

From another angle on 3 November.

The mayor is understandably worried. Some urgent work has been done to stabilise the building, at the municipality's expense, but they are not the owner of the property. The municipality is nevertheless acting in lieu of the owner, as the owner has proved unable to fund the repairs, after repeated orders to do so.

 What the building looked like the day we first saw it in 2006.

At this point in the proceedings the municipality has not decided whether to demolish the building or rebuild it. Hopefully whatever they do they'll be able to get a grant to help cover the costs. The money might come from a project called 'Petites Villes de demain' ('Small Towns of tomorrow'). Whatever happens it is currently a cause for concern as any collapse of the building into the road will cause major disruption to traffic.

Here is what we wrote about the old boulangerie when we first saw it: 

The place we had travelled to see was an old boulangerie in Preuilly-sur-Claise. Right on the edge of the village on the main road, it was almost the first building we saw. An amazing place with many features, including the garden which had been converted into a room of over 110 square metres. That room is almost as big as the house I grew up in, which is a staggering thought. It also had a communal staircase (a stone spiral staircase possibly 500 years old) and a cellar over 1000 years old. The rooms were all higgledy piggledy, and appeared to have grown where they landed. So tempting, but at the same time a real challenge as far as what to do with all that space! It also had no garden except for about 10 metres of shared courtyard. Needless to say we were sorely tempted.

Freaky!

Simon and I were freaked out the other day to see our neighbours' cellar apparently on fire. It was the reflection of our own stove in our sitting room window, aligning with alarming accuracy on the vent into the cellar of the house opposite. It was so real looking that we both took a second to take in that it was an illusion.

Fungi Foray at Ferriere sur Beaulieu

The last of Didier Raas's fungi forays this year was to Le Bosquet at Ferriere sur Beaulieu on 24 October. It was a new site for me, plus it had rained at last, so there were many more mushrooms and some very interesting species.

Didier teaching the group about mushrooms. These are people who have booked with the Loches Tourist Office to attend a session to learn about fungi.

Didier identifying mushrooms as members of the public present them.

Purple Staining Milkcap Lactarius uvidus (Fr. Lactaire humide). This is a slimy species, with purple 'milk' when bruised.

A brittlegill Russula sp (Fr. Russule), one of the species that smells of laundry.

Deathcap Amanita phalloides (Fr. Amanite phalloide), showing the pattern on the stem as well as the volva (the 'cup' at the bottom of the stem/stipe), stem ring and white gills.

Two different webcap species Cortinarius spp.

The Etang du Bosquet (an étang is a dam).

Tiger Sawgill Lentinus tigrinus (Fr. Lentin tigré), a small mushroom that favours riparian habitats and is fairly easy to identify, with its central dimple and brown scales.

Trumpet Chanterelle Cantharellus tubaeformis (Fr. Chanterelle en tube), syn Craterellus tubaeformis, one of the most prized edible mushrooms, found under conifers.

Didier’s basket of specimens for examination under the microscope. Contains Marasmius sp, Lactarius spp, Russula spp, Amanita sp, and Cortinarius sp.

Forest, mostly beech, some oak.

Daliclass and Bicolor Apples

Daliclass is a modern French apple bred from a hybrid of Elstar and Pilot. It is crunchy, juicy and acidic. As is the current fashion for best selling apples in the supermarkets, its yellow rather tough skin is heavily streaked with red. It is considered by French consumers to resemble favourites such as Reine des Reinettes and Golden Delicious. Orchardists like it because it is disease resistant and pest resistant, bears a good crop every year and harvest is neatly tucked in between Gala and Golden Delicious.

The other box, on the right, is labelled 'Bicolor' which is not an apple variety, but a technical description of certain varieties which are predominately red, but with a yellow wash. Gala, Akane and Jonagored are examples. It seems to be a trend to sell apples under this label rather than be specific about the variety. These appear to be very consistent and all the same variety, but I guess next week the box could be full of a different variety.

In Memory of a Soldier From 1914-18

"A victim amongst all those others, but not officially recognised as 'Mort Pour la France'."

Plaque on the grave of Valentin Paillet in the cemetery of Boussay, mentioning "died in his family from his war wounds" at the age of 31 years.

This is a guest post, written by Fabrice Doucet, who is an amateur local historian with a particular interest in the First World War and Preuilly. With his permission, and some AI help, I've translated a post he wrote for Armistice Day last year on a Facebook group that we both belong to, and used his photos.

On this November 11, 2022, let us recall the tragic destiny of a soldier from Boussay during the First World War. Valentin PAILLET, born on September 1, 1888 in Martizay, is the son of Silvain Paillet (farmer) and Virginie (Rose) Vignault. He was mobilized in the 90th Infantry Regiment of Châteauroux and joined his posting on August 3, 1914. He was wounded for the first time by a piece of shrapnel on April 25, 1916 at "Hill 304" near Verdun. After his convalescence, he was posted in July 1916 to the 54th Infantry Regiment, originally based in Compiègne. 

He was evacuated from the front seriously wounded during the battle of the Somme, on September 25, 1916 at Bouchavesnes, because of a "wound in the right temporal region caused by shrapnel". He was awarded the Military Medal and the Croix de Guerre in October 1916. It tells us a little more about the circumstances: "very brave soldier telephonist, absolutely dedicated. Repeatedly volunteered to go and repair the lines under violent shelling. He was seriously wounded during one of his dangerous missions". He was then hospitalised in Bordeaux where surgeons specialising in complex operations on the faces of the "gueules cassées" were stationed. The disfigured faces of these thousands of soldiers will be one of the symbols of the horror of this war. Valentin Paillet went before the special discharge commission of Bordeaux on April 7, 1917 for "complete loss of bone substance in the right parieto-temporal region and left hemiplegia". Discharged category n°1 with a bonus, he was "struck off the rolls" and sent back to his home in Boussay on November 30, 1917, 14 months after his injury. 

He stayed in Boussay with his parents in the hamlet of  Roux and died of his war wounds on May 18, 1920. In spite of his eloquent military citation, he was not recognized as "Mort pour la France", the deadline for recognition being October 24, 1919. In spite of this, the municipality of Boussay decided at the time to inscribe his name on the Monument aux Morts located in the cemetery. Steps taken jointly in recent years with his great niece Jacqueline Paillet have not allowed the official attribution of the mention "Mort pour la France", for lack of being able to demonstrate by a document of the time the cause of death... However, the soldier's career, the plaque on his grave and the family memory leave no room for doubt.  

NB : his brother-in-law Martial Hélias (husband of Marie Louise Paillet) was a cabinetmaker in Preuilly.

War memorial in the cemetery of Boussay (37) where the name of Valentin Paillet is inscribed with the date "1920".

Postcard of soldiers of 14-18 wounded in the face, called the "broken heads" (Versailles June 28, 1919). The writing on the card says "Congress of Peace, Versailles, 28 June 1919, Delegation of the Mutilated -- French."

Grave of Valentin Paillet in the cemetery of Boussay.

Portrait of Valentin PAILLET soldier in the 90th IR of Châteauroux (family archives).