Windflowers: breaking through winter's frozen ground, the colorful, cheery flowers of anemones warm the gardener's soul

摘要

So popular are the anemones of spring, commonly known as windflowers, that florid praise drips from the tongues of all who extol their beauty or garden virtues. Clearly writer Louise Beebe Wilder--profiled elsewhere in this issue--was smitten when she wrote in Adventures with Hardy Bulbs: "Of all the flowers that flicker briefly across the worn brown garment of early spring, none are more tenderly beguiling than the anemones. They do not charm by splurge, hilt by far gentler arts.... And I know ofno more wholly enchanting experience than to come upon a wide group of them in animated dance beneath the pale green veil of the early year's weaving before the snow feel has gone out of the air." F. F. Rockwell, in The Complete Book of Bulbs, counted them "amongst the gayest, cheeriest and most brightly colored of all flowers." In My Garden in Spring, E. A. Bowles proclaimed, "There is a charm in the simple form of a single anemone that goes straight to my heart." Who can blame these writers for this effusive exaltation? The very name windflower speaks to the poet in all of us, as do their colorful blossoms, which lift our spirits as they rise from the frozen soil in late winter.