Switch Your First Flowers from Crocus to American Pasqueflower

What says spring more than the crowns of the crocus pushing up into the air? For many of us, crocus joins tulips and daffodils as the triad of spring, with crocus of course leading the way. So let’s call it plain fact that the crocus is a welcome sight to gardeners. But they are thin gruel for our native pollinators. By shifting your first flowers back a few weeks, you can still get that early-season pop of purple and provide a nectar to break the long winter fast of our native insects. Presenting, the American pasqueflower.

Plant This

American Pasqueflower

• Blooms in early April

• Easy to grow

• Native bees will love you

• Rabbit resistant

  Photo: Mississippi WMO (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Not That

Crocus

• Blooms in March

• Easy to grow

• Easy to find

• Rabbit attracting

  Photo: James Laing (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

American pasqueflower loves a rock garden and is happiest in part shade, says Ashley White, community habitats manager at the Butterfly Pavilion. Like all our native plants, it is well adapted to the high plains/prairie and can thrive through our droughts once established. American pasqueflower is less common than its trans-Atlantic cousin the European pasqueflower, which is a popular xeric plant around here, so check labels carefully at the nursery.

Like the crocus, American pasqueflower is an early-spring plant and very low maintenance. Both make use of spring rains to bloom early in the season and then go dormant. It’s helpful to remember where you planted them because they’ll go back into their roots in the height of summer. American pasqueflower blooms a hair later than crocus — but still in time to be the all-important first food for our native pollinators.