The Calestienne - limestone in Belgium

 

There's a narrow belt of limestone that wanders its way across the French/Belgian border that transforms the normally dull area into a beautiful, interesting landscape.  It's not quite the Ardennes but has hay meadows, floral hedgerows and roadsides, quaint villages and lovely rivers. Being limestone, there are also, of course, caves and gorges.

I only visited a small area from Chimay to Viroinval - the roads are lined with plants like valerian and sickle-leaved hare's-ear, as well as swathes of calciphile species like wild marjoram and wild basil.

Valerian 

Sickle-leaved hare's-ear is frequent

There's an excellent blog https://www.botanicaljourneys.com/index.html which describes some of the best sites in the area as well as further afield around Europe.  I was grateful for this information as I was able to find some little gems with little effort.

Some of the south-facing slopes were almost bare limestone, which gives the herbs a chance to thrive. 

Wall germander was profuse in places.

Straw foxglove was a surprise, although I'd previously seen it at Monkton chalk pit.

And this one stumped me for a while (I phoned a friend) - it's Vincetoxicum hirundinaria, commonly named white swallow-wort. Good for snake bite, apparently.

There's an active environmental strategy in place, promoted by the Walloon region. And plenty of information signs. Fauchage tardif means late mowing, on their roadside nature reserves.

Favourite plant on such a verge was downy woundwort, so fluffy!