Is the answer blowing in the wind?

1st May 2024

The pasqueflower is beloved of herbalists. A beautiful seasonal herb, it combines startling brilliance with wispy fragility. Medicinally it has very specific uses and requires much care in administration. Similarly, acquiring supplies of pasqueflower requires much care. It is rare in the UK so should not be gathered in the wild, instead, herbalists will give it space in their own gardens, typically bought as a small plant, cultivated from the rhizomes, as it’s quite difficult to grow from seed.

For a tour of a wonderful apothecary garden, take a look at this video from Kate Huet, Chair of the Herb Society as she introduces us to the early season stirrings in her own herb garden.

Close up knowledge

To know a plant well always requires stepping away from the books and actually observing the plant growing in its own space. Spend time with it, see how it positions itself against the elements, the places where it thrives, or struggles. Getting to know pasqueflower this way requires readiness to explore in the earliest part of spring. Numbers have dwindled in the UK, although it is found throughout Europe. And, despite its rich purple flowers, it can be quite hard to spot among surrounding grass. Take a look at this photo and see if you can spot the pasqueflowers – there are plenty there, I can assure you!

Free draining calcareous hillsides

The pasqueflower enjoys dry and warm slopes, so it’s typically found on calcareous grassland, especially free-draining hillsides. In eastern counties of the UK it is often found along old earthworks, and from this became associated with Nordic invasions so has common names including ‘Danes’ Blood’ and ‘Danes’ Flower’. Other names are ‘Coventry Bells’ and ‘prairie anemone’ or ‘meadow anemone’. Along with all anemones, it’s also commonly referred to as the ‘windflower’, beautifully referencing the instant animation brought to the flowers by even the lightest of breezes. Lore has it that the flowers only open when the wind is blowing; as many of the open hillsides they frequent have a fairly constant breeze, quite often more than light, their open flowers and nodding habit can be shown to full effect. Their official name is Anemone pulsatilla, linking back to the Greek word anemos, meaning ‘wind’ and connecting this with Pulsatilla, meaning ‘pulsator’ (to beat). A reference to the impact of the herb on heart rate, and one of the reasons for careful administration. Though a relied-upon homeopathic treatment for measles and considered a treatment for tearfulness (according to Greek legend, the flower sprang from the tears of Venus), pasqueflower is poisonous. It is sometimes monikered ‘Laughing Parsley’ through the belief that anyone eating it would die of laughter.

User beware

Pasqueflower is particularly poisonous when fresh, so supplies should always be dried before use. The dried plant will deteriorate within twelve months, hence the need for herbalists wishing to use this herb to keep their own supplies growing in their own gardens. Supplies can be eked out as only a little should be used at a time, overdosing causes violent gastroenteritis and convulsions. In small amounts it has traditionally been administered, particularly for women, for treatment of neuralgia, headache and nervous exhaustion. It could be suggested that these conditions could also be well alleviated by an invigorating trip to a grassy bank to be buffeted by the wind and spirits uplifted by spotting the beautiful flower. To do this today, your best bet is to head to Gloucestershire. Here you’ll find the largest known colony in the UK, on a limestone downland slope near Cirencester, a place with great Roman heritage. Richard Mabey cites this bank, Barnsley Warren, as having a count of around 10,000 flowers. Incredibly, given a site of such interest, there is no official counting or monitoring programme. It is an SSSI, but this relates to the limestone grassland, not the flowers on it. The pasqueflower could come and go without any official record. So we can be inestimably glad for a group of volunteers, led by Kathy Meakin, of Evidence Nature, who do take the time and the care to monitor this place every year. It’s only by taking this methodological approach to building up a year-by-year picture that we stand any chance of understanding this precious population.

Easter flower

The pasqueflower blooms for a two-to-four week period in early spring, typically around Easter time, hence the connection with that period in its name, pasque/paschal. Culpeper takes credit for having drawn this association and naming the plant; others say the connection comes from the green dye achieved by boiling the flower and/or leaf that was used to dye Easter Eggs (a curious association as red eggs are the more traditional dye colour). At this time of the year, therefore, Kathy calls up her team of helpers, preps the grid map, two GPS’s, clicker counters and marker flags and sets off, rain or shine (often both) – wind is guaranteed – to the steep hillside. This year, I was lucky enough to be one of the people to get Kathy’s call. Parking in a non-descript layby on an A road just out of Cirencester, we headed over a long stile to cross a ditch into the field. A little way from the road, about two fields off, is the south-facing bank that’s so favoured by the pasqueflowers. It’s been an incredibly wet winter but this limestone slope is so free draining there was no squelch underfoot, just tussocky grass, until you slow down and start noticing more. It helps to make such a journey with botanists and plants-people, happy to call out what they see or help identify the things you’re curious about. The less grass, the more other species came to the fore – salad burnet, feathery vetches, violets, occasional cranesbills, and then … the pasqueflower herself. Even the most seasoned among us still had a skip of excitement as we reach the object of our search.

Counting on volunteers

On the right territory, we start aligning ourselves. Kathy and Sadie each take a GPS in order to provide our lines (the edges of each side of an imaginary box we’re to walk), the rest of us array ourselves evenly between these two outer lines, counters primed at zero, eyes fixed on the ground. To ensure we accurately scan a north-south grid we have to walk to these co-ordinates, taking us at a curious angle over the contours of the hill. I’d been told to wear stout, ankle supporting footwear, the whole day would be spent walking on an angle, trying to hold the line, and not be distracted along the contour-hugging sheep paths. There were no sheep in the field during this period, they’re kept off while the pasqueflowers are in bloom, far too tasty for them. But the presence of sheep is a critical part of maintaining this grassland to be species-rich. The grazing habit of sheep is to pull away at the grass, lifting it out at the roots, thereby leaving small patches of bare earth perfect for windblown seeds to propagate in. In contrast, cows and horses chew the cud by swiping at grass with their tongues, breaking the blades rather than lifting the roots, which only encourages thicker grass growth, leaving no space for the other plant species to get established. As we completed each square, Kathy would note the numbers we shouted in turn from our clicker counts. She knew from previous years’ surveying which were likely to be the ‘hot’ squares, but it was still a surprise when our numbers built to repeated calls of over a hundred from each clicker. At times it was hard to keep up, concentrating on counting just those immediately below us as we slowly moved across the field, with calls like ‘I’ll take these ones’, ‘have you recorded those?’, ‘I’ll leave those below the ridge for you’, from companions at either side as we co-ordinated our counting to be as accurate as possible. Yes, this is simply a snapshot from one day at the height of the season and, by being consistent in this methodology, should build up a good comparative set of data from year to year. It does take many years to build up a proper picture, especially as Kathy has learnt from talking to a farmer who observed a patch of pasqueflowers for many years on his land, that he reckoned there was a biennial pattern with high and low flowering years alternating. This volunteer study is now in its 5th year (starting two years before Covid, it then had a two year gap, and this is now the third year post-covid). It’s objective is simply to check-in on the population, see how they’re doing. Hopefully this kind of monitoring can go on forever. There seems to be one question that comes up from volunteers and the walkers who pass by (many with cameras) alike. They are keen to know ‘what is it that the pasqueflower likes about this site, will it keep thriving?’ It is the regular annual monitoring that helps us understand more, but we still have much to learn.

What do we know?

We all know it’s been a very wet winter, have they responded well to this? Incredibly, though we were surveying in what was thankfully a break between months of rain, the soil was remarkably dry. The porous limestone and angle of the slope had quickly absorbed and drained any rainfall from the previous weeks. Kathy suspects that the flowers simply shirk off the winter conditions, however inclement, and are perhaps more affected by whatever the conditions were the previous summer. So the heat and wet of last summer could have influenced the surge in numbers we saw this spring. And a surge it certainly was. By the end of the day’s counting, we were able to report a total number of more than 6,000 pasqueflowers. An increase of over 4,000 on the average count of the previous five surveys, and the largest number ever recorded by the volunteers. We are still left with a conundrum however, as the studies Richard Mabey refers to cite this bank as having in excess of 10,000 pasqueflowers. Where have the other 4,000 flowers gone? Unfortunately, it’s not clear when or, importantly how, that count was made so it’s difficult to know how direct a comparison to draw. Our best hope of learning more about this incredible little flower is to keep going with the regular, consistent annual survey work that Kathy and her team so diligently undertake, and be incredibly thankful for their dedication to this. Operating in this voluntary way, however, rather than part of an organised, funded, county-, or country-, wide management scheme, means Kathy not only has to manage the survey, but she then also has to disseminate the results, doing everything possible to ensure people who need to see them do, so they can be part of any future considerations. It’s a reflection of the stretched resources and consequential fragile management systems we have; and how much we rely on people who care and understand about our native plants.

Wondering wanderers

Many people pass along the footpath through Barnsley Warren. Some come specifically to seek out the pasqueflower; some walk by without awareness of the precious plant harbouring just a few feet away; and then there are those who come in search, but still find it hard to see. As with so many good things, they take patience, and getting your eye in. You can’t speed by and hope they shine out at you, maybe something will catch your eye, but to really see them, you need to linger, to gaze, to pause, take stock, look around, look down, take care, and then they appear. I wonder how many will be there next year? —————– If you would like a copy of the two-page summary report of the 2024 survey at Barnsley Warren, or know someone who should see this, please email blog@herbsociety.org.uk and I can send the pdf.