Provence Trip Sept 2024 - Part 5 Wildflowers on the way to St Veran

After Sisteron we headed to the town of Guillestre in the Queyras Natural Regional Park where we based ourselves for a few nights. From there we headed to the highest all year round inhabited village in France, St Veran. Obviously there are ski villages which are higher but people don't live there all the time. We drove along beside the river Guil and stopped at this place which looked scenic to take a few photos.

Growing in the gravel above the river I found some wildflowers! They are also species I've never seen before either which was nice. Finding wildflowers in September is quite rare due to the dryness in most places so that was quite surprising, as they were not low down right beside the river so couldn't have drawn moisture from it where they were situated.

This is Alpine Willowherb (Chamaenerion fleischeri).

Grass-leaved Scabious (Lomelosia graminifolia).

I'm pretty sure this is the Heineken Hoverfly (Rhingia campestris), which I haven't seen since we left Brittany.

Narrow-leaved Valerian (Centranthus angustifolius).

Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus).

I saw these flies - Bumblebee Hoverfly (Volucella bombylans) on the right and Fat-palped Tachina (Tachina ferox) on the left - on this Scabious when we arrived at St Veran, but I thought I would include the image in this post as it's about flowers and insects. As usual all these images can be clicked on to view larger which brings up the images more sharply.