Pulsatilla vernalis(L.) Mill.

Spring Pasque Flowerarctic violetlady of the snowsspring pasqueflower

WFO wfo-0000471763 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202772836
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Philipp
fig. b Philipp, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201288620
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. c Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197079228
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Elias
fig. d Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139497497
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. e Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138529733
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Elias
fig. f Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138402377
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Karsten Rohweder
fig. g Karsten Rohweder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 123048083
Pulsatilla vernalis, photographed by Karsten Rohweder
fig. h Karsten Rohweder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 120475230

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 16 botanical countries

Regions where Pulsatilla vernalis is native: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland AlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFinlandFranceGermanyItalyNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandSpainSwedenSwitzerland
Native distribution of Pulsatilla vernalis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Italy ITA
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 234 in flower of 288 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Pulsatilla vernalis observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 234 of 288 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,339 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -18.4 °C -13.9 °C -6.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 11.9 °C 15.2 °C 21.4 °C
Annual rainfall 681 mm 1,289 mm 2,100 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 105 mm 193 mm 414 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,339 research-grade observations of Pulsatilla vernalis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 8 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Anemone alborosea Gilib.
  • Anemone propinqua G.Don
  • Anemone sulphurea All.
  • Anemone vernalis L.
  • Anemone vernalis var. pyrenaica (Aichele & Schwegler) O.Bolòs & Vigo
  • Pulsatilla propinqua Lasch
  • Pulsatilla sulphurea Sweet
  • Pulsatilla vernalis f. glabrescens Grütter

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.