THE PASQUE-FLOWER— continued. 
of the Hepatica are pink or blue and are visited by bees ; whilst the long, bell-shaped 
tube made by the bright violet sepals of the Pasque-flower enclose honey secreted 
by the staminodes, as well as abundance of pollen, and are visited mainly by bees. 
This beautiful species, one of the most attractive of British flowers, is not 
common. Not growing in Scotland, Ireland, or Wales, it occurs chiefly on upland 
grass land on calcareous soils, though it does well in any ordinary garden mould. 
Its stout, woody rhizome grows deeply into dry rubbly ground, and sends up a 
rosette of bi-pinnate leaves with pinnatifid leaflets and very narrow linear segments ; 
but these leaves do not attain their full size until after the plant has flowered. 
Gerard expressly says that he was “ moved to name ” the plant Pasque-flower or 
Easter-flower (from the Hebrew pesach, or pass-over, Greek Trdcrxa., pascha, French 
pdques) from its seasoning of blossoming, April or May. 
The whole plant — leaves, flower-stalk, involucre, and even the outer surfaces of 
the six sepals — is grey and silky, with long, soft, thickly-set hairs, which form an 
admirable background for the imperial purple of the inside of the corolla and the 
mass of golden anthers. In the bud stage the flowers are pendulous ; but when the 
blossoms first open, writes the late Lord Avebury : — 
“ they face the sky, and the stalks are quite short. The stigmas are numerous and ready for fertilisation. After two days the 
peduncle has elongated, the flower inclines slightly, and the anthers begin to open. The sepals, which are concave, have grown 
longer, and thus protect the pollen more effectively. The flower closes in the evening, and thus some of the pollen is deposited 
on the sepals. After another two days the stalk is ten or even twenty times as long as it was at first, and the flower hangs 
over by day as well as by night. The sepals have more than doubled in length, and have become convex instead of concave. 
If not already fertilised, the stigmas are almost sure to receive pollen from the sepals when the flower closes at night.’* 
The involucre consists of three bracts resembling the foliage-leaves but slightly 
united at their base. The six sepals are pointed and in two whorls of three, and 
reach an ultimate length of an inch and a half ; and, when they have fallen, the 
peduncle elongates yet more, bearing aloft the head of achenes, the feathery awns 
of which may also reach an inch and a half in length. 
The name Pulsatilla^ from the Latin to beat, was first used by Dodoens, 
and seems to have the same significance as Anemone^ from the Greek dvepo<i, anemos^ 
the wind, Pliny saying of some plant so known that it 
“Hath the propertie to open but when the wind doth blow.” 
