Easter's other flowers

Species name: Pulsatilla patens

Common name: pasqueflower, prairie crocus

Location: photos from Wikipedia

Since I blogged about Easter lilies last year, I couldn't do that again this year! If you are disappointed and want to read about Easter lilies instead, you may do so HERE. Instead, I figured this year I would blog about Easter's other flower: the pasqueflower. If you speak a language other than English, this flower probably sounds familiar to you as reflecting the time of year; in French, the word for Easter is "paques," in Italian it's "pasqua," in Spanish it's "pascua;" even in Icelandic the word for Easter is "paskar." It's no surprise, then, that the name of these flowers should be reminiscent of Easter not just because of their name, but also because of their flowering time: they are often the first flowers to emerge in temperate prairies around the world. There are about 35 species in the genus, and each one of these species are early flowering right after the snow melts and the temperature of the soil starts to warm up.

The pasqueflower, sometimes called the Eastern pasqueflower, is native to a circumboreal area in North America, Europe and Asia; countries that claim this flower to be native there include Canada, the United States, Russia, much of Scandinavia and parts of more southern countries in Europe, Mongolia, and China. This flower is so popular it has even pushed its way into being the provincial flower of Manitoba and the state flower of South Dakota despite its drastically reduced population sizes in both locations. Because of the conversion of prairie habitat to agricultural fields around the world, all of the species of Pulsatilla are now threatened with declining populations (some more drastically and faster than others). There is the idea that prairies can rehabilitate themselves naturally if given enough time and given a jump-start through seed planting. Unfortunately, once the field has been plowed the pasqueflower never comes back; disturbing the rhizomes that the flowers grow from in the spring eliminates the population. They grow very slowly from seed and are very sensitive to disturbance (and are not good competitors with other fast-growing species like goldenrods), so have a very hard time re-establishing themselves after disturbance. If you come across a patch of pasqueflowers this spring, refrain from picking them and (most importantly) don't dig them out of the soil. They need as much help as they can get for the remaining areas where they are common.

All parts of the pasqueflower (in most, if not all, species) are highly toxic. Consumption of any part of the plant can lead to convulsions, heart attack, coma, and death. Native North Americans used to use this plant as a natural abortion-inducing medicine; this was likely incredibly effective (and is being looked at by the pharmaceutical industry as a "natural" method of inducing labor) due to its toxic properties. It is still a main ingredient in homeopathy, so pregnant women (and those that are lactating) should never take any kind of homeopathic remedy. The extracts of the plant are used in herbal medicine to treat cough, asthma, and as a sedative.

It's not Easter without lilies

Species name: Lilium longiflorum

Common name: Easter lily

Location: Dave's Garden -- DaylilySLP

Despite having purchased this plant umpteen times for my grandparents over the years for Easter, I've never actually taken a picture of the plant I purchased. I should fix that sometime soon! Until then, I found this lovely photograph on the website Dave's Garden of Easter lilies growing in a garden outside.

The story of how this plant became associated with Easter is a bit of a muddled tale, but an interesting one. This species of lily is native to Japan and Taiwan. The original flower associated with Easter in the United States (and presumably Canada as well) was a lily native to Bermuda. Since this plant has such an unusual growth cycle, gardeners and horticulturalists exploited this phenomenon to force it to bloom around Easter. Unfortunately, somewhere along the Bermuda-New York trade route a virus was picked up that completely devastated the lily crop in the 1920s, and that source of flowers was eliminated. The Americans had a solution to this problem, however, and started importing the flowers from the Ryukyu Islands in Japan. This practice continued for about 20 years until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which halted all trade between the USA and Japan. This meant that Easter lily became a hot commodity, trading often for more than a new car at the time. Now they're clearly much more common (you don't see anyone going to a grocery store with $50,000 to buy an Easter lily), but still heavily associated with Easter due to their flowering time.

Biologically, the Easter lily is an interesting example of plant manipulation. There is a difference between petals and sepals in nature: the petals of a flower are the bright, showy parts that encourage pollinators to visit them, while the sepals are often green, much smaller, and much more drab and only function in protection for the unopened flower bud. All species of lilies have increased their pollination abilities by turning their sepals into "petals" once the flower has opened. The sepals change from green to the same colour as the petals (in the case of the Easter lily, white), and then the sepals and petals collectively are termed the "tepals". A pretty neat adaptation.

The Easter lily is not of great medicinal importance in Canada, but it traditionally has great importance in Traditional Chinese Medicine due to its high concentration of steroidal glycosides. A word of caution: these same steroidal glycosides will cause death in cats, so if you have a beloved cat pet and enjoy Easter lilies, make sure you keep the cat and the plant separated.