Perennial. In dry soil, prairies. Illinois to the Northwest Territory, Nebraska, and Texas. Absent from northern Ohio. March, April.

Rootstock

Thick.

Scape

Six to twelve inches high, with a three-leaved involucre and solitary terminal flower.

Leaves

Much divided into narrow, linear, acute lobes; the basal on slender petioles, those of the involucre sessile, and erect or ascending.

Flowers

Large, white or tinged with purple, two to three inches across.

Calyx

Five to ten petaloid sepals, white or pale bluish purple.

Corolla

Wanting.

Stamens

Many; inner stamens with anthers, outer stamens often sterile.

Pistil

Many carpels in a head, each with a long, hairy style.

Fruit

A head of akenes, each with a long, persistent, feathery plume, made by the growing style.

A Western Anemone of exquisite beauty, opening its starry flowers very early in the spring, and later in fruit showing heads of silky akenes resembling those of some species of Clematis.

Pasque-Flower. Pulsatilla hirtissima

After Gray's "Genera Plantae Americae"

Pasque is a name for Easter, and Pasque-Flower means Easter-Flower. In Minnesota the Pasque-Flower is known to the children as the first flower to bloom in early spring. It is not really the first, several open earlier, but this is the one that attracts popular attention.