Country diary: The rise of the rare pasqueflower is my Easter miracle | Nic Wilson

Therfield Heath, Hertfordshire: Soft and felty beyond belief, these springtime tremblers are also highly scarce – yet here are tens of thousands of them As spring days lengthen and “smale foweles maken melodye”, like Chaucer’s “sondry folk” I long to go on pilgrimage. So every Easter, following this vernal impulse, I walk up the north-eastern edge of the Chilterns. Here on the sunny slopes of Church Hill, I put my faith in an annual miracle. Scattered along the chalky escarpment, about 60,000 pasqueflowers (from the Middle English “paschal” meaning “of Easter”) are surfacing and coming into bloom. Felty flower buds nose through the shallow soil, haloed in plumes of white-haired bracts. I can’t resist stopping to stroke them. The undersides of the petal-like sepals that form the buds feel warm and soft, with the irresistible downiness of a newborn’s cheek. Some of the flowers around me have already unfurled, revealing hosts of golden anthers. Over the next few weeks, the green and white mosaic of grass and chalk will erupt in violet profusion as the short-cropped sward is eclipsed by a multitude of lustrous bell‑flowers. Even the slightest breeze will set the hillside trembling, six