38 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
awning of foliage afforded by woodland trees, from 
the glare of a too hot sun, and where clumps of 
bushes or shrubs shield it on all hands from the 
biting blasts of a March or April east wind. As it 
has wide-spreading rooting tubers it forms extensive 
patches like a bed of violets. The tubers multiply 
by division and are usually crowded together, and a 
number of the pure white blooms spring up close to 
each other, as pearls in a sea of green. 
I have seen a bed of the yellow anemone growing as 
a wild anemone in an orchard, side by side with the 
double white one and the single one, but though they 
are beautiful, as is the blue anemone once found at 
Wimbledon, and pictured by old Curtis in the 
eighteenth century in his wonderful ‘ Flora Londi- 
nensis,’ yet the single white wild anemone surpasses 
all in its delicacy and purity of form and colour. 
And it is the same with the Wild Snowdrop, for the 
single flowered form is far more beautiful than the 
well-known double garden form. 
Where the Wood Anemone grows there you will 
find, too, the Golden Lesser Celandine, and the azure 
blue Bluebell. 
The roots of this jewel of the woods are deep 
reaching (the plant does not become detached from 
its newer rooted offshoots, but grows bigger each 
year; they were sold by weight at one time), strik- 
ing far into the humus soil which is so characteristic 
of a wood or hedgebank. 
As the name Wind-flower suggests, it is a delicate 
