Photo at right of Anemone
occidentalis.
Mountain pasqueflower is an attractive perennial wildflower of alpine and subalpine meadows. The flower stem is 20-60 cm high and has one flower per stem. The herbage consists of greenish to grayish woolly hairs. The basal leaves are pinnately divided, parsley-like (with thinner segments from 0.5-2 mm wide) and with long stalks. The stem leaves are smaller and not stalked.
The flowers are large and showy, measuring up to 6 cm across. Petals are absent, but the 5 sepals are white or sometimes purplish, and surround a cluster of numerous yellow stamens and a central cluster of small, green pistils. Individual sepals are 2-3 cm long and oblong-lanceolate to ovate-oblong in shape. Mountain Pasqueflower blooms soon after the snow melts, which is early summer.
Fruits are clusters of single, plumed achenes. The plumes are feathery in appearance, and may be 5-6 cm long. The plumes aid wind dispersal of the seeds. See the photo below.
I am not aware of anyone using this wildflower as a rock garden/ alpine meadow plant, nor am I sure how easy it is to propagate and transplant, but it is a gorgeous mountain wildflower, and its plumed seed heads are of added interest!
Mountain pasqueflower is found in mountain meadows near treeline.
Anemone occidentalis is found from southern British Columbia south through the Washington Cascades to Oregon, and into the Olympic Mts and east to the Wallowa and Blue Mts of Oregon.
