Pasqueflower

Today's the day ...................... to discover

A bit of light weeding in the rockery today on this glorious spring day.

And how lovely to discover this little hairy Pulsatilla vulgaris  just about to flower  I'd completely forgotten that I had planted it last year when the rockery was new - which made it all the better to see that it had survived the winter.

In the wild, the Pasqueflower is now a very rare plant in the UK, restricted to just a few chalk and limestone grasslands and found on only a handful of nature reserves.  The only place I have ever seen it was growing on Devil's Dyke near the racecourse at Newmarket, Cambridgeshire. 

Cloaked in myth, one legend has it that Pasqueflowers sprang up in places that had been soaked by the blood of Romans or Danes because they often appear on old barrows and boundary banks. However, it's more likely that these sites are favoured because they tend to be undisturbed chalk grassland ........................