This is Grass-of-Parnassus Parnassia palustris, a delightful little flower that's very locally distributed here in North-East England and now much harder to find than it once was. These flowers were photographed in boggy grassland beside a moorland stream near Alston in the North Pennines. The spherical flower buds, which look like a white pearl set in a green clasp, open to reveal a ring of five yellowish-green fan-shaped structures ending in globules, positioned between the stamens and the petals. These structures are staminodes – modified stamens that fool insects in search of a meal. To a hover fly at least, they look like glistening drops of nectar but the flower produces no nectar at all, relying on this deception to attract pollinators. Despite its name, Grass-of-Parnassus is not related to grasses at all; it’s a member of the saxifrage family.
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