This very attractive little flower is meadow saxifrage Saxifraga
granulata. It’s a species of meadows and pastures and it has been in continuous
decline for decades, thanks to the ‘improvement’ of old grasslands with
fertilisers and selective herbicides, which favour grasses and lead to a
decline in wild flower diversity.
I had never seen meadow saxifrage until I moved to the north
east, where many of the unimproved meadows still survive. There are a few
in Teesdale where it grows in great profusion. It flowers in early
spring, before many of its competitors hit their stride, but its season is
short and it becomes harder to spot when other hay meadow wildflowers grow
taller.
It tends to grow in dense groups in the grass because it
produces clusters of tiny buds called bulbils (the granules that the specific
name granulata refers to) when the flowers and foliage die down in
July, so when they sprout next year a whole group of plants grow up where only
one existed before. The bulbils are also carried around in mud on the feet of
cattle, which unwittingly plant it in their footsteps.
I was delighted to find these plants at Wolsingham in
Weardale last week, just a few miles from home, in a corner of a meadow I must
have walked through hundreds of times over the last fifty years, without ever
noticing them before.
There’s always something new to find, even in places you
think you know like the back of your hand ……
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