From “Anemone or Windflower” in Lexicon of Romantic Gardens by W. T. Wehmeyer and Hermann Hackstein:
“The name Anemone comes from ‘nemos,’ the Greek word for wind, and indeed the delicate flowers do move at the slightest breath of wind. The rather fragile-looking flowers have always been symbolic of innocence, trust, transitoriness, and vulnerability. Yet appearances are deceptive, because windflowers are in fact rather undemanding plants that do not require much care.
“Windflowers prefer a sunny to semi-shaded site in the garden. They look especially attractive when planted in small groups. Depending on the species and variety, the flowers may be white, pink, red, blue, or violet, and appear in spring, summer, or fall. Planting different species will thus ensure an enchanting display throughout most of the year.
“Very attractive species include Anemone blanda, for example, which is also known as Greek thimbleweed, and which flowers between March and May. Anemone coronaria, the poppy anemone, garden anemone, or crown anemone, also flowers in spring. Anemone japonica, on the other hand, also known as Japanese anemone, or autumn anemone, ensures color in the fall.”
From “Anemones: Flowers of the Wind” in The Secrets of Wildflowers: A Delightful Feast of Little-Known Facts, Folklore, and History by Jack Sanders:
“Anemone is based on the Greek word for ‘wind,’ whose root word means ‘breathes’ or ‘lives,’ the same root from which words like animated and animal stem. Some authorities say the generic name means ‘wind’ because the flower was believed to bloom when the wind blows. Another theory is more specific, maintaining anemone is a combination of anemos, meaning ‘wind,’ and mone, ‘habitat,’ suggesting that the plant lives in windy places….
“Anemones have a long history of folk recognition, for better or worse. The ancient Greeks believed that Anemos, the wind, used the flowers to herald the coming of spring. Romans carefully picked the first anemone of the year, with a prayer to protect them from fevers.
“Crusaders are said to have returned from the Middle East with the beautiful poppy anemone (A. coronaria). The sudden appearance in Europe of this red-and-white flower sparked tales of its having sprung from the drops of Christ’s blood, and it became a popular flower in the gardens of medieval monasteries….
“Oddly enough, however, many European peasants avoided some anemones as if they carried the plague. When they came upon a field of the flowers, they would hold their breath and run by, fearing they would fall ill if they inhaled the vapors of the blossoms. Egyptians considered the flowers a symbol of sickness, and in China they were planted on graves and called the flowers of death.
“Nonetheless, old herbalists found the plant useful for headaches, gout, leprosy, eye inflammations, and ulcers. Typical of the buttercups, anemones are generally acrid plants, and many species are said to be somewhat poisonous. North American Indians of Quebec used an anemone tea for just about any ailment, while other native nations employed it in treating boils, lung congestion, and eye illnesses. Virgil J. Vogel, in American Indian Medicine, reported that Meskwakis burned seeds to make a smoke that was supposed to revive unconscious persons. Some Ojibwas used the plant to soothe and prepare their throats for singing.
“Modern authorities usually advise against such practices because the plant has some poisonous constituents. Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who developed the modern system of classifying and naming plants and animals, reported that underfed cows died from eating A. nemorosa.”
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photographs of plants in the genus Eriocapitella, commonly called Windflowers, or, as we learned in the first post (see Eriocapitella, or: The Plants Formerly Known as Anemone (1 of 2)), less accurately called Fall-Blooming Anemones or Japanese Anemones, from Oakland Cemetery.
Like many of Oakland’s plants, Eriocapitella variants are used both as landscaping plants and as plants linked to memorial displays. The photos in my previous post show their use as landscaping plants providing visual interest and color contrast to open gardens or pathways; the photos in this post are associated with historical memory or family memorials. As such, photographing this post’s series meant that I could position the colors and shapes of the flowers among the surrounding stone structures to create compositional variations between the subject and background, especially since plants and flowers reflect light so much differently than the textured memorials nearby.
There are trees at Oakland Cemetery that date back to its founding decades (see Celebrating the Trees at Oakland), so may be 150 to 175 years old and represent a kind of historical continuity between the natural landscape and the human-built elements (some of which are just as old) because of their longevity. When I photograph plants like these Eriocapitella (or any of the others!), I often wonder about their longevity too: am I photographing the initial generation of a particular plant, or subsequent generations of the original plant, or a “branch” of the plant created by pollination or propagation? These are conjoined historical and botanical questions that occur to me because in addition to photographing the plants, I typically spend time researching their histories, and there are threads of merging timelines between any given plant’s botanical history and its use at Victorian gardens like those of Oakland.
Here, for example, is an overview of the plant’s early historical arc — which takes us from the 1600s to the 1800s — from Flowers and Their Histories by Alice M. Coats:
The flower so named [as Anemone japonica] is in fact a native of China, but was introduced to Japan at some early date as a cultivated plant. It was first described by a German, Dr. Andreas Cleyer, who lived in Nagasaki from 1682 to 1686 while in the employment of the Dutch East India Company. At that time, and for nearly two centuries afterwards, no European was allowed to penetrate further into China or Japan than the immediate vicinity of two or three ports, so it was natural for later botanists to believe that the flower was indigenous to Japan, more especially as it had escaped from cultivation and become naturalized there….
But the first living plant (as distinct from dried specimens) to reach Europe came from China; it was sent to the Horticultural Society in 1844 by Robert Fortune, who found it ‘in full flower among the graves of the natives, which are round the ramparts of Shanghae; it blooms in November when other flowers have gone by, and is a most appropriate ornament to the last resting-places of the dead.’
Coats goes on to explain subsequent botanical developments in detail, describing hybridization that resulted in many of the ancestral cultivars whose children are still used in gardens today, especially those created through the earlier twentieth century, to around 1910. Likely introduced to gardens in North America in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, the plant engendered widespread use in the United States just as it did in England and Europe, because of its resilience and its late blooming period that provided pre-winter seasonal color. So we have overlapping timelines between the plant’s European introduction, the development of its first cultivars, its transition to North America, and its appearance in historic gardens — and the creation of Victorian-themed cemeteries like Oakland. These are not coincidental historical happenings, but instead represent the emerging and continuous connections between flowers, their histories, and their cultural significance. It’s noteworthy, too, that Robert Fortune’s explorations found the plants “in full flower among the graves of natives” and he described them as a “most appropriate ornament to the last resting-places of the dead” — given their frequent use in cemeteries and the memorial meaning attributed to them (explained in 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names) as symbols of hope, resurrection, and rebirth.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
