ANEMONE VIRGINIANA. 
TALL ANEMONE.—THIMBLE-WEED. 
NATURAL ORDER, RANUNCULACEZ. 
ANEMONE VIRGINIANA, L.—Hairy; principal involucre three-leaved, the leaves long-petioled, 
three-parted; their divisions ovate-lanceolate, pointed, cut-serrate, the lateral two-parted, 
the middle three-cleft; peduncles elongated, the earliest naked, the others with a two- 
leaved involucel at the middle; sepals five, acute, greenish, in one variety white and 
obtuse; head of fruit oval or oblong. (Gray’s AfZanual of the Botany of the Northern 
United States. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's 
Class-Book of Botany.) , 
iT is scarcely possible to have an Anemone brought to our 
2329 notice, but the many poetical and other pleasant asso- 
ciations which have been connected with it through so many 
ages crowd themselves on our attention. A large volume might 
be devoted wholly to the polite history of the Azemone. All we 
can do in a few pages like ours is to refer to some of the most 
prominent circumstances that have been connected with the 
family. Few would believe that any of the. pretty species which 
form the genus, and which have had so many pleasant stories 
founded on their innocent-looking little flowers, ever were in ill- 
favor with mankind; and yet the ancient inhabitants of Eastern 
Europe believed that the wind was poisoned by passing over a 
field of Azemones, and that severe maladies followed those who 
had to breathe in this poisoned atmosphere; and this belief 
exists among the common people of those lands even down to 
our time. For this reason the Persians have taken an Anemone 
to be the emblem of sickness, yet few of those who write of the 
“language of flowers” know how the association originated. 
The Romans appear to have had some such an idea, but believed 
(93) 
