THE GREEN LIZARDS' FOOTPATH

The Green Lizards’Footpath
  STEP 1 :
Since the former agricutural practices were,
the chalk grasslands have been threatened by shrub colonization.
This parcel is going to be restored by ovine grazing.
On the left you can find aligned morello trees.
They correspond to a former orchad.
There are two aromatic plants : Thyme and Marjoram.

STEP 2 :
This parcel is called“Les Vignettes", wich means small vine.
The vine was cultivated in Normandy for over 1000 years.
Today, this cultivation has disappeared.
Nevertheless, you can still find some vine stocks
and typical plants of vineyard.

STEP 3 :
Many trees pescies live in this forest like oaktrees,
hazeltrees, hornbeamtrees, hollytrees or beechtrees.
Animals also live in this forest, like the red squirrel,
the fox and different species of tits.

STEP 4 :
Farmers use to remove stones from vineyards
and piled them up out of their land.
Today, trees like corneltrees or mapletrees colonize thes heaps of flints.
With the fruits of the Cornelian cherrytree, you can make jam,
which tastes like bitter redcurrant jam.

  STEP 5 :
This mowing grassland is not profitable from an economic point of view,
but it is interesting for the fauna and the flora.
The many multicoloured flowers attract flying insects
and birds like swallows, which hunt them.

STEP 6 :
Even if slopes help to avoid soil erosion,
a great number of them disappeared because of human activities.
The green lizard warms itself in the sun in this type of slope.
It lives in sunny climes, that is why it is widely spread in the South of France,
but quite rare in Normandy.
Along this way, you can also see spiders, which are sometimes called the Nursery Web Spider,
because the female carries its egg sac underneath her.