
208 PLANTS GROWING IN LIGHT SOIL. 
heavy fuzz that protects them from the cold. They knew 
better than the leaves how glad we all should be to see them 
here; 
Mr. Gibson regarded them as our earliest spring flowers. 
WIND-FLOWER. WOOD-ANETIONE. (flare CV/IZ,) 
Anemone guinguefolia. 
FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 
Crowfoot. White, or tinted with Scentless. General, April, May. 
blue or pink. 
Flowers: terminal ; solitary. Calyx: of four to seven petal-like sepals. 
Corolla: none. Stamens: numerous. Fisfz/s : numerous, forming a head. 
Leaves : from the base; three also on the flower stem, whorled below the 
flower and divided into three-toothed leaflets. Stem : delicate ; slender. 
It is said that the Greeks named their anemone wind-flower 
because it appeared at the windy season ; but we would rather 
connect our lovely blossom with the pathetic grief of Venus 
over the body of the slain Adonis. As she approached Cyprus 
in her swan-drawn chariot she heard coming up through mid- 
air the groans of her beloved. She therefore turned back to 
the earth, alighted, and bent over his lifeless body. Overcome 
with grief she reproached the Fates and said: 
“Theirs shall not be wholly a triumph; memorials of my 
grief shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, 
and of my lamentation shall be annually renewed. Your blood 
shall be changed into a flower ; that consolation none can envy 
=me.”’ 
She then sprinkled nectar on the blood and the flowers arose. 
The wind blows them open and then blows the petals away. 
So they are short lived; their coming and going being attribu- 
table to the wind. 
“* Wind-flowers we since these blossoms call, 
So very frail are they, 
Tear-drops from Venus’s eye let fall, 
Our wood anemone.” 
The European species, A. pavonina and A. ranunculoides, are 
scarlet and purple respectively. 

