LXXV.^THE WOOD ANEMONE. 
Anemone nemorosa Linne. 
A lthough poor stunted specimens of this delicately tinted flower may be 
found among grass on wind-swept hill-sides, it is seen at its best under the 
partial shade of the leafless boughs of our Spring woodlands. It seems most 
probable that the names Anemone and Wind-flower were originally applied to an 
entirely different plant, possibly, as Dr. Prior suggested, a species of Cistus. The 
delicate, fugacious petals of these shrubs, which are often white with a blood-red 
spot at the base, seem to agree far better with the legendary origin of the Anemone 
than does our pale, blushing wilding. Theocritus compares the Anemone with the 
Rose, and an ancient annotation of his poems adds ; — 
“ Anemone, a scentless flower, which is reported to have sprung from the blood of Adonis/* 
Bion, the follower of Theocritus, as translated by Andrew Lang, writes : — 
“ Woe, woe for Cytherea, he hath perished, the lovely Adonis ! 
A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers. The 
blood brings forth the rose, the tears, the wind-flower.’* 
Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses ” were, however, the source of much mythology in ages that 
knew but little Greek, and in Golding’s sixteenth-century translation his comparison 
of the flower of the Anemone to that of the Pomegranate runs as follows : — 
“Of all one colour with the bloud, a flower she there did find, 
Even like the flower of that same tree, whose fruit in tender rind 
Have pleasant graines enclosede — howbeit the use of them is short. 
For why, the leaves do hang so loose through Hghtnesse in such sort, 
As that the windes that all things pierce with everie little blast 
Do shake them ofF and shed them so as long they cannot last.** 
On this Dr. Prior cruelly suggests that Venus’s tears might well be compared 
to a Wind-flower, as they were probably soon blown away. 
We have, however, taken the word Anemone into our language, throwing the 
accent back from the third to the second syllable and thus making the long o of 
the Greek av€jxo)vq into a short one, and have long ago transferred both it and its 
translation Wind-flower to this genus of Ranunculaceie . 
This widespread species A. nemorosa Linn6, which is none the less beautiful 
because it is common, is one of the few plants which is able to grow under beech 
trees. The explanation of this, as in the cases of Snowdrops, Primroses, Wild 
Hyacinths, Wood Sorrel, and a few others, is that there is an underground perennial 
rhizome, or other form of enlarged stem, in which food is stored by leaf-action 
during the previous season, so that the early-flowering, low-growing species can run 
through all the above-ground portion of its life-history before the beech comes 
into full leaf. 
The rhizome of this species is not, however, very thick. It is nearly cylindrical, 
horizontal in direction, and woody ; and sends up the radical foliage-leaves and flower 
