ANEMONE PATENS, VAR. NUTTALLIANA. 



NUTTALL'S PASQUE-FLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, RANUNCULACE^. 



Anemone patens, L., var. Nuttalliana. — Villous, with long, silky hairs; flower erect, 

 developed before the leaves ; leaves ternately divided, the lateral divisions two-parted, 

 the middle one stalked and three-parted, the segments deeply once or twice cleft into 

 narrowly linear and acute lobes ; lobes of the involucre, like those of the leaves, at the 

 base all united into a shallow cup ; sepals five to seven, purplish or whitish, spreading 

 when in full anthesis. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. 

 See also Wood's Class-Book.) 



HAT are called "genera" are as much realities as day 

 and night, but it is as difficult, sometimes, to define the 

 limits of the first as of the second; for, in nature, things glide 

 into each other imperceptibly, as day glides into twilight before 

 night comes. 



We experience this difficulty in the case of the flower named 

 above. It is an Anemone ; and yet, in some respects, it borders 

 so closely on Clejnatis that Pursh, one of our earliest botanists, 

 thought it belonged to this genus, and called it C. hirsutissima, 

 while others made it into a distinct genus, and called it Pul- 

 satilla, which is the Italian common name of a closely allied 

 species, and means, " Shaken by the wind." In Clematis there 

 is little tendency to make petals, — indeed, about four petal- 

 like sepals are all that are generally produced, — and the seeds 

 have long, silky tails to them. The Pulsatillas make a verticil 

 of sepals, and have no real petals ; and the seeds, as in Clematis, 

 have silky tails. Dr. Gray, however, as well as other modern 

 botanists, regards those Anemones, the seeds of which have 

 Clematis-like tails {Pulsatillas), simply as a section of the genus. 

 Our present species, which belongs to this section, has but a 

 single row of large, pale-blue sepals, and these are as silky as the 

 lons^-tailed seeds. What is called the involucre is a verticil of 



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