PULSATILLA NIGRICANS (Puls.) Botanical name : Pulsatilla nigricans Linn. Family: Ranunculaceae Synonyms : Anemone pratensis L., Pulsatilla pratensis Mill., P. vulgaris Mill. Common names : English: Wind Flower; French: Pulsatille; German: Kuchenschelle. Description : A deciduous, perennial herb, with a spindle shaped, thick ligneous dark brown, oblique, several headed root. Stem 1 to 1.5 meter high, simple erect, rounded. Leaves radical, petiolate, bipinnatifid, with linear segments; at the base surrounded by several ovate, lanceolate sheaths. Flowers varying in colour from dark violet to light blue, bell shaped pendulous, terminal reflexed at the open, surrounded by distinct sessile involucre, composed of 3-palmately divided and cleft bracts with linear lobes. Microscopical : Powder: light olive brown to dusky greenish yellow, numerous simple, thick walled hairs upto 2.5 mm in length and up to 20 µ in thickness, trachea upto 35 µ in breadth with spiral markings or bordered pores; fragments of epidermal tissue with stomata, the latter being broadly elliptic and upto 55 µ in length; in some stem epidermis; some epidermal cells with wavy vertical walls; calcium oxalate crystals and starch grains few or absent. Habitat : Open fields and plains in dry places in many parts of Europe, Russia and Asia. History and authority : Hahnemann introduced this in Homoeopathic practice in 1805. Allen’s Encyclop Mat. Med. Vol. VIII, 20. Part used : Whole plant. Preparation : (a) Mother Tincture φ Drug strength 1/10 Pulsatilla Nigricans in dried coarse powder 100 g Purified Water 300 ml Strong Alcohol 730 ml to make one thousand millilitres of the Mother Tincture. (b) Potencies: 2x to contain one part tincture, two parts Purified Water and seven parts Strong Alcohol. 3x and higher with Dispensing Alcohol. Old method : Class III .