Pictured above is the Easter-blooming Pasque Flower. This, writes Geoffrey Grigson in The Englishman's Flora, 'has a fair claim to being the most dramatically and exotically beautiful of all English plants'. Folklore gives it exotic origins too, as Danes' Blood or Danes' Flower, growing from the blood of fallen Danes on ancient earthworks and barrows. Although it is now a threatened species, it still thrives on such sites, outcrops as they are of that dwindling resource, un'improved' calcareous grassland. As with so many other precious plants and insects, the loss of grazing and the spread of scrub have driven the beautiful Pasque Flower into scarcity.
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