672 POLYANDRIA. POLYGYNIA. Anemone 
base.. W oodw. Stem and fruit-stalk purplish. Flowers rather drooping, 
blackish, sometimes double, or entirely of a purplish red colour, as 
Hutton certifies, about Keswick, and others have remarked in Devon-* 
shire. Root tuberous, horizontal. E.) 
Wood Anemone. (Irish: Nead Coilleah. Welsh: Friihogen y goedwigi 
Blodeuyn y gwynt. E.) Woods, hedges, and hollow-ways, common. 
P. April.* 
A. ranunculoi'des. (Flowers mostly in pairs: petals five, (sometimes 
six), elliptical: seeds pointed, without tails: involucrum of 
three or five somewhat stalked, deeply cut, leaves. E.) 
(F. Bot. 1484 E.)— Fuchs. 162—Trag. 95. 2— Lonic. i. 163. 5— Kniph. 1— 
Ger. 306. 1— FI Dan. 140— Lob. Ic. i. 674. 1—Ger. Em. 383.1— Park. 
325. 5. 
Much resembling A. nemorosa , but petals yellow, alternately two on the 
outside, and two within. Fruit-stalk with two leafits, the latter of 
which is at the base. ( Leaves few. Involucrum nearly sessile. E.) 
The stem occasionally supports a single flower, and is flexuose towards the 
bottom, as represented in the fig. of Fuchsius and FI. Dan. 
Yellow Wood Anemone. Shady places and hedges, rare. Near King’s 
* The flowers fold up in a curious manner, and bend downwards, against rain. The 
whole plant is acrid. Goats and sheep eat it, but it is apt to disorder the latter violently. 
Horses, cows, and swine refuse it. Linn.—(The recent flowers are poisonous, and the 
plant yields an acrid, volatile principle, so corrosive as to be used externally instead of 
Cantharides. It ^ is also serviceable in head-achs, tertian agues, and rheumatic gout. 
Swediaur. E.) This plant is sometimes found with yellow dots on the under surface of 
the leaves, in which state it is figured in Ray, 3. 1. at p. 128, and has been mistaken for a 
Polypodium. Some have supposed these dots the work of an insect, but without sufficient 
proof. Dr. Pulteney, in Linn. Tr. ii. p. 305, has rendered it probable that they are formed 
of a minute species of Lycoperdon , though as they may be discovered in their younger state 
under the outer cuticle of the leaf, it is not obvious how the seeds could be introduced. 
These plants are evidently in a diseased state, of a yellow green, and do not bear flowers. 
The leaf of Betonica officinalis is liable to be affected in the same manner : (also that 
.of Fragaria. The roots afford a nidus for Peziza tuberosa. By garden culture the 
stamens become transformed into supernumerary petals, and thus it attracts the admiration 
of the florist more than when in its native shades it merely affects the “ simplex munditiis .” 
The remarks of an elegant writer may be applied with peculiar propriety to this genuine 
pvimaveral production, fit emblem of virgin modesty.” “ The love of flowers seems 
a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy: but, perhaps, it is the early flowers 
of Spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure, and our affections 
seem immediately to expand at the sight of the first opening blossom, however humble its 
race may be. It is not intrinsic beauty, or splendour, that so charms us, for the fair maids 
of Spring cannot compete with the grander matrons of the advanced year ; they would be 
unheeded, perhaps lost, in the rosy bowers of Summer and of Autumn : no, it is our first 
meeting with a long-lost friend, the reviving glow of a natural affection, that so warms us 
at this season: to maturity they give pleasure as a harbinger of the renewal of life, a 
signal of awakening nature, or of a higher promise : to youth, they are expanding being, 
opening years, hilarity, and joy. With Summer flowers we seem to live as with our 
neighbours, in harmony and good will ; but Spring flowers are cherished as private 
friendships.” Though the more splendid varieties of Anemonies or Wind-flowers are 
derived from exotic species, which beautifully enamel the meads of Greece, our native 
ornament of the lonely thicket cannot fail to engage a due degree of admiration, 
“ Where thickly strewed in woodland bowers 
Anemonies their stars unfold.” E.) 
