Bion sang:
Alas! the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born and bloom around
From every drop that falls upon the ground.
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose
And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.
Pliny asserted the anemone only blooms when the wind blows.
The flower was associated with illness in the days of the Egyptians and also during the Middle Ages, when there was also a superstition that the first anemone gathered would prove a charm against disease. The first spring blossom was, therefore, eagerly searched for, delightedly plucked, and carefully guarded. No token of affection was more prized by a loved one going off on a journey than the gift of an anemone. An old ballad has the lines:
The first Spring-blown Anemone she in his doublet wove,
To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove.
Anemones were greatly valued in Elizabethan gardens. Indeed it was a fad to grow them. Parkinson distinguishes the family of anemones as "the wild and the tame, or manured, both of them nourished up in gardens." He classifies them still further as "those that have broader leaves and those that have thinner, or more jagged, leaves"; and then again into those "that bear single flowers and those that bear double flowers." The wild kinds included "all the Pulsatillas, or Pasque (Easter) flowers." Parkinson mentions many varieties. He describes the "tame" anemones as white, yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet, blush gredeline (between peach color and violet), orange-tawny, apple-blossom, rose-color, and many others. From his list we can have no doubt that Shakespeare's flower was one of the purple star anemones—the Anemone purpurea striata stellata, "whose flowers have many white lines and stripes through the leaves." Parkinson's name is "the purple-striped Anemone."
Of recent years anemones have again become the fashion.
"How gorgeous are these flowers to behold," exclaims Ryder Haggard, "with their hues of vivid scarlet and purple! To be really appreciated, however, they should, I think, be seen in their native home, the East. In the neighborhood of Mount Tabor in Palestine, I have met with them in such millions that for miles the whole plain is stained red, blue and white, growing so thickly indeed that to walk across it without setting foot on a flower at every step would be difficult. I believe, and I think that this view is very generally accepted, that these are the same lilies of the field that 'toil not neither do they spin,' which Our Lord used to illustrate His immortal lesson. Truly Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
The Adonis flower (Flos Adonis) spoken of by Ben Jonson and others has nothing to do with the anemone. It is a kind of camomile. "Some have taken the red kind to be a kind of Anemone," says Parkinson. "The most usual name now with us is Flos Adonis. In English it is also called the Mayweed and Rosarubie and Adonis Flower."