This slender plant grows in bogs and damp places all over Britain and
blooms in autumn.
It has large white flowers, which grow singly at the end of tall green
stalks. These stalks are square and slightly twisted.
Each flower has five creamy-white petals, covered with delicate veins.
Inside this ring of petals, lying at the bottom, are five curious
scales, like tiny hands. The hands have each ten fingers, tipped with
yellow dots, so you may count fifty dots altogether. On the scales are
glands which hold honey. This, you may be sure, the bees very soon find
out.
In the centre of the flower is a round pale green seed-vessel, and in
between the scales with the tiny yellow dots lie five fat stamens with
heavy yellow-heads.
The Grass of Parnassus has also five green sepals, whose tips you can
see appearing in between each of the five white petals, as you look down
into the flower.
Most of the green leaves of this plant grow from the root. They are
oval, with smooth edges, and each leaf has a stalk of its own.
But often you will find a single leaf clasping the flower-stalk half way
up its stem, and this leaf has no stalk of its own.