Prairie Crocuses

Prairie Crocus – It must be Spring!

One of the first visions of early spring is discovering a patch of Prairie Crocus (Anemone patens). They are a low-growing perennial, with pale blue or mauve flowers, and fuzzy sepals and yellow stamens. The Prairie Crocus is found mostly on 'virgin' land (unbroken) prairie but also in dry, open woods.

They popped up here at the beginning of April on the hills by our house and I spotted the earliest ones on Easter weekend. Since then they have increased in number and have braved 2 spring snowstorms. Last year I tried digging up a few and transplanting them to my garden but I doubt that they will come up there this year. I did buy a cultivated Pasque flower at a local green house which is turning green right now so that's probably as close as I'm going to get to crocuses in my garden.

Like many flowers, the Prairie Crocus has a number of other common names: Pasque flower (because it tends to bloom around Easter); Prairie Anemone (because it’s actually an Anemone, in the Buttercup family, not a true crocus, which is in the Lily family); Prairie Smoke (for their long, feathery seeds); and Windflower (“Anemone” is from the Greek, meaning “wind”; it was once thought that anemones only blossomed when the wind blew in spring).