Anemone at the Shakespeare Garden
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Anemone at the Shakespeare Garden *
Anemone blanda * Anemone coronaria * Anemone hupehensis var. japonica * Anemone sylvestris
Anemone comes from the Greek “anemos” which translates to wind, hence a common alternate name for anemone is windflower.
“Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose
And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.”
— Lament for Adonis
Pline, the Elder, claimed the anemone only opened when the wind blew.
He was not correct being that they only open when the sun is shining.
The Egyptians associated the flower with illness, and in the Middle Ages, there was a superstition that the first anemone picked in the spring was a charm against illness. For that reason, the anemone was a valued gift of love, especially for a loved one leaving on a journey. An old ballad recounts:
The first spring blown anemone she in his doublet wove
To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove
although, he would have been familiar with the plant given it was popular in Elizabethan gardens. John Parkinson describes the anemone of the Elizabethans as, “the wild and the tame.”
Most classical scholars believe that Shakespeare refers to the anemone in his poem “Venus and Adonis,” which although not mentioned by name, the anemone is described and this flower also has a strong association with the myth. “In Lament for Adonis,” written by Greek poet Bion, Venus mourns Adonis in these lines:
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose
And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.
The anemone is mentioned in only one of Shakespeare’s works
The anemone is an herbaceous perennial
They like full to partial sun and appreciate moist soil. The anemone will bloom from spring through fall in a variety of beautiful colors. It is hardy in zones 3-10, although no single species will thrive in all of those. The variety that Shakespeare might have known is the purple star anemone.
By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d,
Was melted like a vapor from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up chequer’d with white.
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood,
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
— Venus and Adonis
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