Looking back, I realize that my love affair with prairie plants began when I acquired a copy of Claude Barr’s “Jewels of the Plains” more than 30 years ago.

Barr’s entertaining description nudged me to plant my first pasque flowers (Pulsatilla patens, now Anemone patens var. multifida). He described them as “warm robed in silver fur, preferring to dodge severe weather” in early spring before opening “into lavender satin beauties with gold centers and deeper-lavender to blue and deep-purple outer wraps.”

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