This species is one more of the spring flowers seen in ancient woodlands. It pops up in early April and begins to flower about now, forming patches of white, star-like flowers. By July it dies down and stays dormant, unseen for 8-9 months. Yes, this is a curious life-style: the species is a long-lived perennial plant and a geophyte (a plant with an underground storage organ, often a bulb but sometimes a rhizome as in this case).
It is definitely a native species. Sherreffs (1985) notes that its pollen has been recorded in Scotland from the late-Glacial period (13,000-10,000 B.P.). The first record in the British flora is from William Turner in 1562. Turner thought it was a white buttercup, and his script says “Ranunculus..the fourth kind..with a white floure..groweth in woddes and shaddish places in April”. He was a priest, a physician and a botanist with an interest in all of nature. He created a herb garden and kept lists of wild flowers. He believed in the doctrine of the transmutation of species, three hundred years before Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Anemone nemorosa belongs to the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. It looks like a white buttercup but if you look carefully (see the old painting above or the photo below) you can see that the flower does not have petals surrounded by sepals; it just has what look like white petals but which are really sepals, not green like sepals usually are, but white. Each shoot has a single flower which opens in bright light (pollinated by flying insects) and closes and droops at night.
The flowers are white, but sometimes pinkish or rarely tinged with blue. Like most attractive wild flowers, it is available from horticultural suppliers often as ‘bulbs’. Even the Royal Horticultural Society advertises ‘bulbs’ when they should say ‘rhizomes’.
It is one of many species whose flowering time has been recorded over decades, allowing researchers to predict the likely effect of climatic warming. Sparks and Menzel (2002) show that a 1 oC rise in temperature in the early part of the year is likely to advance flowering by 7 days.
Although a woodland plant, it is not particularly shade tolerant. It is found in deciduous woodlands (never in coniferous woods), where it exploits the bright conditions before the tree canopy becomes leafy and casts shade. During just a few weeks it flowers, produces food by photosynthesis and translocates this to the rhizomes.
It forms patches. We can image that a patch originates from a single seedling, with the plant slowly spreading by making new rhizomes, and sometimes branching. This is a very slow process, said to be 2.5 cm per year, with rhizomes surviving for seven years (Sherreffs 1985). The largest patches may be a few hundreds of years old in ancient woodlands.
It doesn’t occur solely in woodlands. Grime et al (1988) found it in open grasslands, permanent pastures and hedgerows, and even in heathland. It can even survive heathland fires, with its rhizomes safely underground. Its presence in heathlands is weak evidence that these habitats were once woodlands. Gimingham (1972) made a list of 12 woodland species that are often found in heathlands but he was cautious about whether this really points to a woodland origin of heathlands. We cannot be sure.
Anemone nemorosa tolerates a wide range of soil types, ranging from the most acidic (heathland) to the limestone pavements in the Burren (Ireland) and the English Lake District. Its woodland habitats are often nutrient poor. At present, I think it is threatened by the invasive alien Allium paradoxum (the Few-flowered Garlic) which at the moment is smothering the woodland floor in the Lothians of Scotland, depriving Anemone of light.
Its leaves contain the toxic compound anemonin C10H8O4, a chemical defence against herbivores. Roe deer and bank voles are not poisoned by it, and they graze on the leaves and the rhizomes. They are ‘winners’ in the evolutionary arms race. By contrast, a large dog was killed by a small experimental dose. This compound has been suggested as a cosmetic for use on human skin, as it prevents pigmentation. Advice: do not lick your lover’s face.
What of its name? Most people find it hard-to-pronounce. Linnaeus described and named the plant, but I think it already had the name ‘anemone’ by his time. It comes from the Middle French word anemone and is linked to the Latin word anemone, which stems from the Greek word anemone, meaning “wind flower” or “daughter of the wind”. The species is in no sense a daughter of the wind, so the name is a mystery. Some say they like the way the flowers tremble in the wind – that is the only logical connection I can find. The specific name, ‘nemorosa’ is from the Latin for ‘wooded’ or ‘shady’.
References
Gimingham CH (1972) Ecology of Heathlands. Chapman and Hall.
Grime JP, Hodgson JG, Hunt R (1988) Comparative Plant Ecology.Unwin, London.
Sherreffs DA (1985) Biological Flora of the British Isles: Anemone nemorosa. Journal of Ecology 73, 1005-1020.
Sparks TH & Menzel A (2002). Observed changes in seasons: an overview. International Journal of Climatology 22, 1715-1725.
©John Grace
Botany in Scotland 
I have heard these anemones are also called wind flowers.. Would that be correct do you know?
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