Beauties in pink

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Dedicated to the victims and people suffering from the Japanese quake-tsunami disaster 11 Mar 2011

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Crocuses found in the botanic garden of the biological institute of Würzburg university.

Some of them grow in a garden part that is emulated like a mountainous area.

common pasque flower [Pulsatilla vulgaris]

Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!

I really don't want to bore you, folks, but I MUST post another series of Pulsatilla / pasque flower photos I shot today. This time I was only 15 km away from my door sill, close by the village of Weikersheim-Laudenbach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

We are still at the beginning of the pustilla budding at the little dry grass strip close by Laudenbach.

It is stated that there will be up to 3.000 blossoms in the pasque flowers heyday.

At the moment there will be at least on third of the flowers visible.

But it was really a wow / grand oportunity (for me) to sit (carefully) between all the purple gems.

I hope you can enjoy my close-ups, too.

Pretty in pink

Pulsatilla - pasque flowers - Kuh-oder Küchenschellen

Face to face with the beast: Pulsatilla halleri in the botanic garden of the Tuebingen university

Toasted / dried up haulm from last year between the recently blossoming flowers.

Pulsatilla vulgaris - common pasque flower taken in the nature reserve Sodenberg.

Puslatilla regeliana - a little darker purple blossom colour than the other species.

Pulsatilla vulgari ssp. grandis in full bloom.

Pulsatilla vulgaris

Some of the results / photo shoots of my "pulsatilla-hunting" from last weekend!

Pulsatilla vulgaris / Gewöhnliche Kuhschelle / Common Pasque flower
is now blooming in tousands - if you know where to look for it.

Pulsatilla grows in sparely wooded pine forests or meadows, often on a sunny sloping side with calcium rich soil.

One of my favourite Pulsatilla fields in not far away from my hometown, on the sunny hills of the vine village Weikersheim-Laudenbach, near the legendary Bergkirche Laudenbach (mountain church of Laudenbach), guarded by the statue of St. Kilian (?).

Here my "hint of the day" for pulsatilla photographers:
Try to go flat in front of the little flowers with your camera - without mashing any others of the protected plants - and pick as much of the withered grass stalks around the flowers.
Every single culm distracts from the main motive, the blossoms.

Do you see the "forgotten" culms in front of the second flower from left?
Now you know what I'm talking/writing about...