# Pasque flower (Anemone pulsatilla)

*Pasque flower, Easter flower, passe flower, wind flower, meadow anemone; pharmacy *Pulsatilla*; *Anemone pulsatilla* L., now *Pulsatilla vulgaris**

**Known today as.** *Anemone pulsatilla*, of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, a low plant of dry, open ground across central and northern Europe, in England a local plant of high chalk downs and limestone pastures. Its single flowers, about an inch and a half across, have dull violet-purple sepals silky beneath, and are followed by hairy seeds with long feathery tails; the whole plant is covered in silky hairs. Grieve derives *pulsatilla* from a Latin word meaning to beat, for the downy seeds beaten about by the wind. The whole herb, gathered soon after flowering, is the drug, and Grieve notes that the drug was also taken from the related meadow anemone.

Kind: Plant  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** Poisonous. Grieve records that the fresh plant raises blisters on the skin and that its acrid oil breaks down into anemonin, “a powerful irritant, like cantharides,” which in overdoses causes violent inflammation of the stomach and bowels; pure anemonin depresses the circulation, breathing, and spinal cord, with slow feeble pulse, coldness, paralysis, and death, and in poisoning by the extract of the plant convulsions are always present. The meadow anemone, she adds, “has been considered somewhat dangerous.” Cows and horses will not touch the plant.

## What was it used for?

Grieve records the tincture as nervine, antispasmodic, alterative, and diaphoretic, used for the spasmodic cough of asthma, whooping cough, and bronchitis, for catarrh of the eyes and bowels, as an emmenagogue, for headaches and neuralgia, and for “nerve exhaustion in women”; it was “specially recommended for fair, blue-eyed women.” It was in the British Pharmacopoeia in her day, and in homoeopathy was considered almost a specific in measles.

## What does modern science say?

No European monograph covers it, and the searches of Europe PMC made for this entry found no clinical study of this species.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **anemonin**: formed as the acrid oil of the fresh plant breaks down; “a powerful irritant, like cantharides”
- **anemonic acid**: the other breakdown product, apparently inert

**Mechanism.** Pure anemonin depresses the circulation, breathing, and spinal cord, by Grieve’s account, and the oil blisters the skin.

**Standing.** There is no European monograph. It was in the British Pharmacopoeia in Grieve’s day; no clinical study of this species was found for this entry.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard calls it “especially dedicated to the Church’s Easter festival,” and records that the rich green colour from its petals was used in olden times to stain the eggs given as Easter gifts.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Gerard and Parkinson, as Grieve quotes them.** The green juice of the purple sepals was used in some countries to colour Easter eggs, and the English name has been thought to come from that; but Gerard, Grieve writes, “expressly informs us that he himself was ‘moved to name’ this the Pasque Flower, or Easter Flower,” for the season of its flowering. Parkinson counted “five different kinds of Pulsatilla, which flower in April,” used for tertian ague and obstructions.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Anemone Pulsatilla.” As published on botanical.com.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “PASQUE-FLOWER.” Project Gutenberg, 44638.
- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Anemone Pulsatilla.” As published on botanical.com.

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*Pasque flower.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-17. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/pasque-flower

Historical description, not medical advice.