Anemone

“ The locomotive power of the anemone, or actinia, is very sluggish. It will remain days and weeks in the same spot, and it moves only by sliding one edge of its base very slowly along the object to which it is fastened, and drawing the other after it. It can therefore never pursue its food, and appears to have no sense except that of touch, as a worm or shiner may float in the water all about the anemone without causing it the slightest agitation; but if the tiniest tip of one of its tentacles be touched, or brushed even, the whole creature is alive in an instant, and grasping for its prey. ”

“ ANEMONE.—The origin of the Anemone, according to Ovid, is to be found in the death of Adonis, the favourite of Venus. Desperately wounded by a boar to which he had given chase, the ill-fated youth lay expiring on the blood-stained grass, when he was found by Venus, who, overcome with grief, determined that her fallen lover should hereafter live as a flower. ”

“ The largest species of our native Anemones is A. Virginiana, “Tall Anemone.” This handsome plant loves the shores of lakes and streams; damp rich ground suits it well, as it grows freely in such soil, and under moderate shade when transferred to the garden.
The foliage of the tall Anemone is coarse, growing in whorls round the stem, divisions of the leaf three parted, sharply pointed and toothed. In this, as in all the species, the coloured sepals, (or calyx leaves) form the flower. ”

“ There shall not be one minute of an hour
Wherein I will not kiss my sweet Love's flower.
The Anemone is also called Pasque-flower, from its blossoming about Easter; and Wind-flower, from being formerly supposed to open only when the wind blew. Hence its name Anemone, from the Greek word ἀνεμος, anemos, wind. The wild wood Anemone, being a well-known and indigenous plant and most delicately beautiful too, would seem preferable, as an illustration of the Flower; but the deeper colours of the cultivated kinds suit better the romance and the allusions of the poets. ”

“ In what goes on underground this anemone is a tree.
I do not forget—am not likely to forget—Coronaria, which in its (I must own) somewhat sophisticated form of Anemone de Caen is the glory of my blood and state in the little hanging garden I now possess. I own, it seems, the exact spot it likes. It is thoroughly at home, and proves it by flowering practically all the year round. In the dog-days, I don’t say. But who cares what happens in August? Except for that waste month—the only one in the almanac with nothing distinctive to report—I believe I have hardly failed of a handful of coronaria. ”

“ A still richer species is the Anemone pulsatilla, or Pasque Flower Anemone; a silky downy plant, easily recognised by its blossom of glowing purple. The blue mountain anemone (Anemone Apennina) is only to be found, as its name indicates, on the bold rugged sides of lofty mountain-heights.
The Anemones belong to a very important order,—the Ranunculaceæ, or Crowfoot family,—which is divided into five sub-orders: 1. Clematidæ; 2. Anemoneæ; 3. Ranunculaceæ; 4. Helliboreæ; and 5. Actœæ, or Pœniæ. Linnæus distinguishes forty-one known genera, comprising a thousand species. ”

“ But this legend was not followed by the other classical writers, who made the Anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Theocritus compares the Dog-rose (so called also in his day, κυνοσβατος) and the Anemone with the Rose, and the Scholia [15] comment on the passage thus—"Anemone, a scentless flower, which they report to have sprung from the blood of Adonis; and again Nicander says that the Anemone sprung from the blood of Adonis." ”

“ The skin of the tentacles, and, indeed, of most parts of the Sea Anemone is filled with little cells or vesicles, each containing a spiral thread, which when touched instantly darts forth, and penetrates the body coming in contact with it. In this way, if a worm, a small fish, or any other soft animal touches the tentacles of an Anemone, it is instantly transfixed with innumerable delicate darts, which not only assist the tentacles in holding the destined prey, but also seem to exercise a sort of numbing influence upon the victim, deadening his struggles and rendering him an easy conquest. ”

“ She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful, fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her kaleidoscope. ”

“ But, with “self-renunciation life begins,” thinks the noble anemone, as she slowly rises like a mermaid from the deep, and spreads out her golden hair, glancing proudly but benignantly around her, dining or breakfasting, as the case may be, with luxurious comfort but not voracious appetite, and appearing, later in the day, in the transparent silken robes and courtly plumes that betoken her birth and race—a tribute of gratitude which all the Sagartian Anemones render for their food, most of them appearing in their best and loveliest robes and forms after a hearty meal. ”

“ We frequently meet with anemones attached to stones, sand, or shells, by a wide sucking base, and if some species be moved from their chosen site, certain death is the result. Yet in by far the greater number there is a distinct faculty of progression—the anemone, by a slow, gliding motion, gradually removes itself, and climbs up the sides of the vessel, or takes possession of a tuft of weed, or shifts from one stone to another, or fairly leaves go of its anchorage, and floats like a balloon upon the surface. ”

“ The Gentians have all but gone, the Anemone also, and Primula farinosa has become most rare. [Pg 63] In their places stand the Globe-Flower, the Bistort, the Paradise Lily (barely open) , the Sylvan Geranium, the blue Centaurea, and the pale yellow Biscutella, while the last blossoms of Anemone sulphurea have been joined by the exquisite blush-tinted heads of Anemone narcissiflora. It is as though some curtain had rolled swiftly up upon another landscape—one which, as we are but human, we must applaud more rapturously than we did the last. ”

“ When entirely closed, this anemone, unlike [62] many others, is extremely flat, being scarcely more than a quarter of an inch in thickness; indeed, so extraordinary is the peculiarity to which I allude, that a novice would have great difficulty in believing that the object before him was possessed of expansive powers at all, whereas, in point of fact, it is even more highly gifted in this respect than any other species of Actiniæ. ”

“ I remarked, as looking through a herbarium of Himalayan plants belonging to a friend of mine, I came upon a small anemone which, contrary to the custom of that most delicate of flowers, had preserved its colour in all its first freshness. Indeed, the scarlet petals, each bearing a distinct, heart-shaped blotch of white in the centre, could scarcely have glowed more brilliantly in life than they did in death. ”

“ The sea-anemone not only looks like the flower of that name, but it has something that reminds us of the vine called the Virginia Creeper. The anemone is fastened to a rock by a sucking disc. It holds on with this sucker a great deal tighter than the vine clings to a wall it is climbing, with its little sucker feet. If you try to pull a sea-anemone up, you might think it has a strong root running down into the rock. But it has only a sucker foot for clinging. Sea-anemones have been known to move, but as a rule they spend their lives contentedly, fastened to rocks near which they are born. ”

“ On searching these rock pools we should find many curious animals. None would interest us more than the sea-anemone, though when we find it hiding in some dark corner, with its tentacles all drawn in, and looking like a soft brown lump, it may not promise much beauty.
The sea-anemone adheres firmly to the rocks, so we will not pull it off. If we watch long enough we shall see it begin to rise in the middle, and from the summit will creep out, very slowly and softly, beautiful tentacles like a wreath around the top. ”

“ A. anguicoma, or the snaky-locked anemone, is a pretty but curious creature. It is all arms, just as a crab is all claws; but so delicate in form, so beautifully striped in the tentacles, that it stands quite apart in the tank as a thing unique. ”

“ Each of these rooms is also connected with the stomach in the middle, and with those parts which, as you see, look like the petals of a flower, when the anemone is spread out, waiting for its food. Each of these "petals" is hollow like the fingers of a glove. The anemone not only lives surrounded by water on the outside, but it is full of water on the inside. Water is to the anemone what blood is to you; it circulates all through the anemone, and the anemone makes its petal-like fingers stand up by filling them with water. ”

“ The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.
The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower ( [Greek: anemos] , anemos, the wind.)
It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty.
Youth, like a thin anemone, displays His silken leaf, and in a morn decays. ”

“ They can be spread out or drawn back into the body at will, and when they have all been withdrawn the anemone seems to be nothing more than a shapeless lump of colored jelly.
Anemones spend the greater part of their lives clinging to the surface of a rock at the bottom of the water, the broad base of the body acting just like a big sucker. They can crawl about, however, at will, and sometimes they will rise to the surface of the sea, turn upside down, hollow their bodies into the form of little boats, and then float away, perhaps for quite a long distance. ”

“ Two or three sharp limpet shells waved feathery seaweed fans.
A long time passed and the girls still lingered. They discovered that most of the pools boasted anemones, some not unlike an ordinary land daisy with light-colored tentacles stretching ray-shaped from a yellow centre. When touched with an empty shell, the anemone would close over it, folding both the shell and itself into a tight brown ball, then open slowly and drop the shell. ”

“ In many respects Sea Anemones resemble the Hydra, one of the pond dwellers, they are rather more highly developed, however. Any Sea Anemone will serve our purpose because we are about to examine the little darts with which its tentacles, and even its body, are armed. If we find several different kinds of Anemone, we must take the most transparent we can find and also a small specimen ”

“ The Anemone was held sacred to Venus, and the flower was highly esteemed by the Romans, who formed it into wreaths for the head.——In some countries, people have a strong prejudice against the flowers of the field Anemone: they believe the air to be so tainted by them, that those who inhale it often incur severe illness. ”

“ This, however, is not the character of the Anemone as grown in English gardens; and so it is probable that the name has been transferred to a different plant than the classical one, and I think no suggestion more probable than Dr. Prior's that the classical Anemone was the Cistus, a shrub that is very abundant in the South of Europe; that certainly opens its flowers at other times than when the wind blows, and so will not well answer to Pliny's description, but of which the flowers are bright-coloured and most fugacious, and so will answer to Ovid's description. ”

“ And [182] nothing in the desert is the same because of that perfume. Years will not fade the blue of the anemone, nor a thousand bitter winds blow away the rare fragrance.
I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex. There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and overshadows all the others.
“Why am I not a man,” I say to the sand and barrenness with a certain strained, tense passion, “that I might give this wonderful, dear, delicious woman an absolutely perfect love!” ”

“ When covered with sea-water the ugly blobs of jelly open out like beautiful flowers. In some places along our coast the floor of the sea is like a flower garden, gay with thousands of coloured Anemones.
Those little "petals" are really tentacles, used for catching and holding food. We will use a shorter word and call them feelers. They are set in circles round the top of the Anemone, and there are many of them. The Daisy Anemone, for instance, has over seven hundred feelers. Each feeler can be moved from side to side, and can also be tucked away, out of sight and out of danger ”

“ Often you may find this plant unfolding its delicate blossoms before the snow has left the ground. That, in our northern latitudes, is usually among the first flowers in blossom. Soon after she appears, you may see one and perhaps two different species of the Anemone. One, especially—the Anemone Thalictroides, as it used to be called in botany, though it is now the Thalictrum Anemonoides, I believe—is among the fairest of all these flowers of spring. She has a blossom as white as snow. The Anemone Nemrosa is almost as fair, too, though not quite, I think. ”

“ The instinct to cover itself with Actiniæ is so strong within it that it loads itself with as many of these friends as it can procure, sometimes with more than there is room for on the shell. The sea-anemone on its part calmly submits to the crab's manipulations—a fact very surprising to any one who is aware of the anemone's ordinarily extreme sensitiveness to contact, and knows how it immediately draws itself together on any attempt to detach it from the ground, and will often let itself be torn in pieces rather than give way. ”