Anemone

a-nem'o-ne, a genus of plants belonging to the buttercup family. The name is Grecian, signifying wind. In Grecian mythology the anemone was said to have sprung from drops of blood from the foot of Venus who had stepped on a sharp thorn. There are many anemones or windflowers. Some of them have become beautiful inmates of the flower garden. Anemones are without petals, but have a colored calyx that looks like a corolla. The sepals can hardly be told from petals. Our windflower comes early in the spring and is often called the wood anemone. It is found everywhere in our hardwood region. Another anemone, the pasque flower, with its purplish sepals and silky involucre, is the earliest flower of the prairies from Illinois and Missouri far to the north and westward. The seeds have long feathery tails. Other anemones, coming in the summer, ripen cylindrical heads of cottony seeds. See Aconite; Buttercup; Larkspur; Marsh Marigold