Pivoine officinale (Common Peony)
Valdrôme is a place known for the magnificent flowering of several hundred wild peonies, a protected flower throughout France.
To admire this large flower, from mid-May to mid-June is best, depending on the year in question and the state of forest edges.
Lady’s slipper, the golden footwear of Diois forests
According to legend, Venus, surprised whilst asleep, left her golden slipper behind.
In the Diois forests, this orchid can be locally prolific, but it remains rare in both France and Europe, and hence it is protected at a national level.
Its yellow slippers add colour to the undergrowth of our woods from May to July.
Lavender, panacea of the Diois
The list of uses of this plant is a long one! In this, the cradle of its distillation, many Diois houses contain a bottle of essential oil to treat minor daily ailments.
This little bush, before it became field-grown in our valleys, already adorned, if sparsely, the rocky south faces of our mountains, embalming the air and colouring the landscape with its violet flowers.
The wild tulip, symbol of the Parc Naturel Régional du Vercors
A symbol of the equilibrium between human activities and nature, the wild tulip shares this distinction with the black grouse.
This flower, protected at a national level and characteristic of the Pays Diois is prolific in the Die basin where its flowering announces the coming of spring by tingeing the green meadows with yellow.
Vulgar thyme, also known as ‘farigoule’ in Provence
No, thyme is not vulgar, just common, as it occurs all over the world and has always been used by human populations for medicinal, culinary and symbolic reasons.
Flowering from May to July, this aromatic plant confers nobility on Provencal cooking and covers therocky a reas of the southern part of the Diois well exposed to the sun.
