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Ancient Anemone - Page 2

© Audrey Stallsmith

Among the anemone's meanings in the Language of Flowers are "abandonment," "expectation," "refusal," or "sickness." We've already seen where "sickness" comes in and can deduce that "expectation" probably derives from the legend of Anemos, "refusal" from the bloom's occasional closing up, and "abandonment" from Venus' bereavement.

Some of the better known types of anemones are anemone hepatica, anemone patens, and anemone japonica. Hepatica derived from the Greek "hepar" or "liver," although the plant's leaves are actually more kidney-shaped. It is also known as liverwort in the U.S., not to mention liver leaf, kidneywort, and liver weed. The wild form is stemless and only about 6 inches tall with blue to white flowers.

Anemone patens is more often called anemone pulsatilla or pulsatilla vulgaris these days. Its common names are pasque flower and meadow anemone, because it blooms near Easter in sunnier areas than most of its kin. Covered with silky hairs, pulsatilla also has an acrid juice that can blister the skin and inflame the eyes. Its name derives from "pulsc" or "I beat," in reference to how its seedpods are flailed by the wind. The wild pasque flower's purple sepals were once used to dye Easter eggs green. Gerard reports that pulsatilla sometimes blooms again in September.

The fall-blooming anemone hupehensis (AKA anemone japonica) was brought back from the Orient by colorful Scottish botanist Robert Fortune in 1845. The adventurous Fortune single-handedly repelled a couple different pirate attacks on the Chinese junk in which he was a passenger. While firing on the pirates with a double-barreled "fowling piece," he also had to hold a pistol on the helmsmen of his own boat--to keep them from retreating below-deck with the rest of the passengers and crew.

The anemone too has proved much tougher than people expected! Although not as popular in our day as it seems to have been in Gerard's, it continues to hang in there. And, from those 1730 pictures I've been mooning over, I suspect that a lot more could be done with this flower than has been attempted in recent years. The first nurseryman to give us some anemones like the ones in the old paintings could make a second Fortune!

Note: High Admiral and Rose Jonker anemone sketches are from the March plate of Robert Furber's 1730 Twelve Months of Flowers. Anemone coronaria photo is by J. R. Manhart and anemone hepatica photo is by Albert Perdeck, both courtesy of the Texas Vascular Plant Image Gallery at http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/gallery .

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