ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The wind roses (anemons) form a plant genus within the family of roosters (Ranunculaceae). This genus includes around 150 species, which are mainly native to the northern hemisphere and there mainly in the temperate areas of Asia.

As an ornamental plant, many species have also found distribution in Central European gardens. The most important among them are the garden anemone (Anemone coronaria) and the Turkish-born Balkan wind rose (Anemone blanda), also called ray anemone.

Description

Vegetative characteristics
Anemone species grow as perennial, herbaceous plants, depending on the species they can reach very different heights (10 to 60 centimeters). Rhizomes or tubers are formed as survival organs.

The leaves are usually only basic; At flowering time, the ground leaves are missing in some species. The stemmed base leaves are simple or composite. The leaf spread can be lobbed or divided. The blade edges are smooth to toothed.

Generative characteristics
Depending on the species, a Quirl (wirtel) is usually two to seven (rarely up to nine) deciduous leaf or chalice leaf-like bold leaves. The terminal, cymous or dyold inflorescences are rarely one-, usually two- to nine-flowered.

The twilight flowers are radially symmetrical. The 4 to 20 (rarely to 27) free flower envelope leaves are 1.5 to 40 millimeters long. The colors of the flower coat leaves range from white to pink to red, from violet to blue, green and yellow. There are nectarities. There are 10 to 200 stamens. There are many free fruit leaves, each containing only one seed plant. A pen is formed.

Many, stalked or unsteady, egg-shaped to perverted egg-shaped fruits (bellows or nuts) are formed per flowers. The fruits are up to 40, rarely up to 50 millimeters long and sometimes hairy. On the fruits is usually the stylus still clearly recognizable.

Toxicity
All species are weakly poisonous in the fresh state by protoanemonin, therefore arrow poison was formerly obtained from it. During drying and cooking, the poison contained is converted into the harmless anemonin. In fresh feed, anemones can cause poisoning in cattle.

Nomenclature and distribution

Taxonomy
The generic name Anemone was first published by Carl von Linné.

The botanical generic name Anemone goes back to antiquity. Pliny the Elder associates it with the Greek anemos = wind. Anemona was also a nymph at the court of the goddess Flora. According to legend, Flora’s husband Zephyr, the god of the wind, fell in love with Anemona, whereupon she was turned into a flower by the jealous goddess.
But it is rather assumed that the name Anemone is due to an Arabic word for Adonis, namely an-nu'mān (= blood) and denotes a red-flowering plant species