Pulsatilla vulgarisMill.

European pasqueflowerPasque FlowerPasqueflowerpasqueflower

WFO wfo-0000471767 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pulsatilla vulgaris, photographed by Jan Herr
fig. a Jan Herr, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203014461

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 vulgaris is native: Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Northwest European Russia, Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AustriaBelarusBelgiumCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyHungaryNorthwest European RussiaPolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Pulsatilla vulgaris, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 916 in flower of 1,082 examined

Proportion of examined Pulsatilla vulgaris in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 167 175 95% 91% to 98%
Apr 302 337 90% 86% to 92%
May 327 396 83% 79% to 86%
Jun 81 112 72% 63% to 80%
Jul 5 18 28% 13% to 51%
Aug 6 13 46% 23% to 71%
Sep 10 12 83% 55% to 95%
Oct 12 12 100% 76% to 100%
Nov 4 5 80% 38% to 96%
Dec 2 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Pulsatilla vulgaris 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. 916 of 1,082 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 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 1,977 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.8 °C -1.8 °C 1.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.4 °C 22.6 °C 24.7 °C
Annual rainfall 601 mm 813 mm 1,216 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 104 mm 164 mm 221 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,977 research-grade observations of Pulsatilla vulgaris 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 24 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 acutipetala Schleich.
  • Anemone bogenhardiana Pritz.
  • Anemone collina Salisb.
  • Anemone grandis (Wender.) A.Kern.
  • Anemone intermedia Schult.
  • Anemone linnaeana Rouy & Foucaud
  • Anemone pisciensis Sism.
  • Anemone pratensis Sibth.
  • Anemone pulsatilla L.
  • Anemone pulsatilla f. henryi (Christ) U.Tosco
  • Anemone pulsatilla subsp. gotlandica (Johanss.) Lindell
  • Anemone punica Sism.
  • Anemone sylvestris Vill.
  • Anemone tenuifolia Schleich.
  • Pulsatilla amoena Jord.
  • Pulsatilla aperta Schur
  • Pulsatilla bogenhardiana Rchb.
  • Pulsatilla media Bogenh.
  • Pulsatilla oenipontana Dalla Torre & Sarnth.
  • Pulsatilla propera Jord.
  • Pulsatilla transsilvanica Schur
  • Pulsatilla ucrainica (Ugrinsky) Wissjul.
  • Pulsatilla vulgaris subsp. grandis (Wender.) Zämelis
  • Pulsatilla vulgaris var. gotlandica Johans.

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.