From “Anemone (Windflower)” in The English Flower Garden by William Robinson:
“Anemone (Windflower): A noble family of tuberous alpine meadow and herbaceous plants, of the Buttercup family, to which is due much of the beauty of spring and early summer of northern and temperate countries. In early spring, or what is winter to us in Northern Europe, when the valleys of Southern Europe and sunny sheltered spots all round the great rocky basin of the Mediterranean are beginning to glow with colour, we see the earliest Windflowers in all their loveliness….
“Those arid mountains that look so barren have on their sunny sides carpets of Anemones in countless variety…. Climbing the mountains in April, the Hepatica nestles in nooks all over the bushy parts of the hills. Farther east, while the common Anemones are aflame along the Riviera valleys and terraces, the blue Greek Anemone is open on the hills of Greece; a little later the blue Apennine Anemone blossoms. Meanwhile our Wood Anemone adorns the woods throughout the northern world, and here and there through the brown grass on the chalk hills comes the purple of the Pasque-flower….
“A. japonica (Japan Anemone) [is] a tall autumn-blooming kind, 2 feet to 4 feet high, with fine foliage and large rose-coloured flowers…. The various forms of the Japan Anemone are useful for borders, groups, fringes of shrubbery in rich soil, and here and there in half-shady places by wood walks.”
From “Anemone” in A History of Herbal Plants by Richard LeStrange:
“This mixed genus of rather charming, hardy, perennial flowering plants are native to several parts of the world, including North America, Japan and much of Europe and Asia. Their generic name Anemone is derived from the Greek word anemos meaning the wind. Hence Windflower, their common name, ‘so-called according to [John] Gerard for the floure doth never open it selfe but when the wind doth blow… whereupon it is named Herba venti: in English Winde-floure.’
“During the early part of the medieval period the bitter acrid juice of this particular herb was prescribed for leprosy, often under the names of Smell Fox or Wood Crowfoot, throughout much of Europe and Asia. The affected part was simply ‘bathed’ with a strong decoction of the leaves, which when mixed with ‘the grease of old hog‘ also made an excellent ointment good for cleanse malignant and corroding ulcers’. The juice was occasionally given to those suffering from paralysis of the body, but strong doses are known to have killed as well as cured….
“The use of the ‘Anemone in solution’ was still popular in the United States during the, late nineteenth century. It was applied direct as an external remedy to treat scalds, ulcers, syphilitic nodes, paralysis and even ‘opacity of the cornea’, a most uncertain procedure.”
Hello!
Whether you’ve seen them blooming in spring, early summer, or autumn, you’ve likely encountered plants like those in this post and the next one — which I found posing for me in early October in several different locations at Oakland Cemetery.
Those with white flower petals below had just started popping up behind Oakland’s new visitor center — which opened only six months ago — and are the first flowering plants I’ve seen growing there. I had previously written about how the visitor center’s garden was being designed to mimic or mirror the overall layout of the 48-acre property, complete with boundaries or markers shaped to match the cemetery’s sections — so it is no surprise that this new garden is being planted with matching plants. Ancestors to these plants made their way into European gardens and those of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, around the same time Victorian cemeteries like Oakland were being designed and created. Their historical-to-current use reflects the property’s longevity as a repository of plants that are native to China or Japan but became well-naturalized outside of Asia, then combined in the gardens’ landscaping with plants having native roots in the Southeast.
For several centuries, these plants were all grouped in the genus Anemone, with “Anemone,” “Japanese Anemone”, “Chinese Anemone,” and “Windflower” applied as their common names. “Windflower” is believed to have been derived from the observation, however improbable, that wind blowing from one direction induced the plants to flower — a characterization I wrote about in a previous post, discussing that the plants were called “Winde-floure” (or a variation of that) in the 16th and 17th centuries (see Anemone, the Winde-Floure (1 of 2)). Continued use of Windflower as a common name is likely based on a more botanically apt observation, though: that the plants’ tiny stamens — visible in the orange ring at the flower petal centers in my photos — produce equally tiny anthers that will tumble across the blooming flower and are easily scattered by the wind.
Plants originally in the Anemone genus — and still commonly called “Anemone” — demonstrate two distinct blooming periods: in late spring to early summer, or in the autumn. I have only photographed those that bloom in autumn (as late as November) at Oakland; and as I write this, I’m not sure if they have spring-bloomers or if I just miss them when surrounded by the fields of daffodils, tulips, and irises that tend to get my attention. I have a note somewhere in my head to check next year for spring Anemones, so it will be a surprise to all of us if I discover that there are some that I’d never noticed before.
These distinct blooming periods (spring/early summer versus fall), though, are relatively rare among flowers of the same genus — which leads to what has actually happened with the original Anemone genus in this plant’s story. Those that bloom in the spring under the Anemone genus or common name have now been separated taxonomically from those that bloom in the fall. The genus name Anemone is reserved for the spring-blooming plants; those that bloom in the fall have been placed in the genus Eriocapitella after a half-century scientific endeavor to determine that the spring- and fall-blooming varieties were genetically quite different. This means, therefore, that the Japanese Anemone whose scientific name was originally Anemone japonica is now named Eriocapitella japonica instead. And it also means that because these are recent developments — the distinction was only finalized within the last two decades — common usage still reflects the original genus name, and many botanical or botany-adjacent writings bundle them all together.
I’ll spend a little more time on other interesting characteristics of these plants and their histories in the next post; but for now, let’s pause for a moment on the word Eriocapitella. Like many of the Latin-based scientific names for plants (or animals, or a lot of other things), it’s odd to write or say in a way that “anemone” is not. I got used to it by breaking it up into “eerio-capa-tella” then noticed how the center ring of the flower looks a bit like one piece of cereal from a box of Cheerios…
… so now think of it as “cheerio-capa-tella” but without the “ch” and with a slightly brighter color. Having clarified that (!!), I can now point out that the white-petaled flowers below are most likely Eriocapitella japonica, and the pink ones (which apparently have a habit of occupying benches) are most likely a double-petaled hybrid called Eriocapitella × hybrida, a variant that is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
