THE GRASS OF PARNASSUS— continued. 
the flower stage, persist round the fruit-capsule ; and it is only the small number of 
the stamens and the union of the carpels which should have prevented the suggestion 
of affinity in the name White Buttercups which has been applied to the plant. 
The flowers are remarkably variable in diameter, ranging from less than three- 
quarters of an inch to over an inch and a half. Creamy white exteriorly, the five 
beautiful rounded and hollowed petals are a purer white pencilled with pellucid 
greenish veins on their inner surfaces, these veins acting apparently as honey-guides. 
The whole of the exquisite blossom seems, in fact, elaborately contrived to favour 
cross-pollination by insect agency. We have seen a considerable number of insects, 
Thrips, ants, and small flies crawling about the corolla ; but in no single instance 
did we see an insect impeded by the secretion, or a dead fly within the flower. There 
seems no evidence in favour of the carnivorous function ascribed to the remarkable 
staminodal glands merely from their superficial resemblance to the leaf of a Sundew. 
The flower is markedly protandrous, the large anthers of the five stamens 
being fully formed when the corolla first expands, when they are pressed with their 
backs against the immature apex of the ovary. Maturing in succession, the subulate 
filament of each stamen lengthens, straightens itself, and moves forward through an 
arc of over 120° : the anther discharges its pollen outwards and falls off, while the 
filament now lying horizontally between two petals is even more persistent than they. 
This movement of each stamen occupies a separate day, and not till the sixth day do 
the four sessile stigmas become receptive ; so that cross-pollination would appear to 
be essential. One of the most striking details in the flower is the whorl of five 
nectaries alternating with the stamens. These are good-sized obovate scales secreting 
honey from two glands on the inner surface of each of them, but fringed with a 
comb of from eight to seventeen filaments, terminating in glistening, but dry, yellow 
knobs so deceptively resembling drops of honey that flies have been observed vainly 
licking them. The external form of these nectaries has suggested a kinship between 
Parnassia and the St. John’s-worts {Hypericum)^ in which the stamens branch in a 
somewhat similar manner; but Jussieu was undoubtedly right in seeing most affinity 
to the Saxifrages. The honey is more copiously secreted from the basal glands of 
the nectaries on bright sunny days and then the flower has a honey-like perfume, 
which disappears as the sun declines. 
The ovary is made up of the unusual number of four carpels, united into a 
single chamber, with parietal placentas bearing numerous very minute seeds, ripening 
to a capsule which splits down the four midribs of the carpels. 
