ANEMONE JAPONICA. 
(Japanese Anemone.) 
Class. 
POLYANDRIA. 
Order. 
POLYGYRIA. 
Natural Order. 
RANUNCULACEiE. 
Generic Character.— Involucre of three cut leaves 
distant from the flower. Calyx of five to fifteen petal- 
like coloured sepals. Petals wanting.— Bo n's Gard. 
and Bot. 
Specific Character — Plant a perennial. Radical 
and stem-leaves ternate, divided into cordate, unequally 
trilobed, doubly serrated segments. Involucrum 
inferior, having a cuneate conformation at the base of 
the petiole ; sessile when superior. Peduncles elon- 
gated, unifloral, or (if dichotomous) having a flower 
and involucrum upon each subdivision. Sepals twenty, 
conspicuously silky. 
Synonymes — Atrogene Japonica, Clematis 9 poly- 
pctala. 
This is the first Anemone we have figured, and it affords us no small degree of 
gratification to adorn our pages with so fine a one. Apart from the fineness and 
gaiety of its flowers, the greatest recommendation of Anemone Japonica is its 
usefulness. If it is grown in the open ground, and it is unquestionably more in its 
proper element there than under shelter, it comes to perfection in a fine season when 
most summer-flowering plants have become straggling, exhausted, and uninteresting. 
In an unfavourable summer or autumn, too, from blooming naturally at the latter 
season, A. Japonica has a chance of remaining comparatively unaffected when other 
subjects of Flora's kingdom may be prostrate. Early autumn frosts, it is scarcely 
necessary to mention, injure the flowers of our plant as they do all others, and this 
circumstance suggests that it may be made to flower in pots for the decoration of 
the conservatory or greenhouse. By bringing plants forward under glass, they may 
be had in flower early in autumn, and by using a retarding process against others, 
they can be made to bloom proportionably late. The annexed woodcut in connec- 
tion with the plate conveys some idea of the habit of the plant. Its flower-stems 
rise from a foot to eighteen inches high, and bear a profusion of blossom. It will 
stand high cultivation as a pot-plant, and is very suitable for the flower-garden 
either in masses or as solitary specimens. When intended to occupy a bed in a 
parterre, it may be planted with something that would flower through the summer 
and give way to the superior claims of its neighbour in autumn. The present 
winter has been sufficiently severe to test its capability of withstanding cold. It 
VOL. XIV. NO. CLVIII. E 
