ANEMONE QUINQUEFOLIA.
FIVE-LEAVED ANEMONE.
Polyandria Polygynia, Linn. Ranunculaceæ, Juss.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Calix none. Petals 5 to 9, or more. Seeds many.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Stem one-flowered, stem leaves thrice-ternate, lateral ones deeply bipartile ; folioles
cuneate, cut-lobate, dentate, acute; corolla 5-6-petalled, seeds ovate,
pointed. B.
SYNONYMS.
A nemone nemorosa, Mich, and Nutt.
A. nemorosa, p. quinquefolia, Pursh.
R oot perennial, horizontal, clavate, white or wood-brown, consisting
of a thick tuber, three inches long, the thickness of a goose-
quill, and beset with numerous, small, black fibres. Stem oblique,
Anemone quinquefolia. 11
crooked, cylindrical, brownish-red in the middle, white below.
Leaves terminal, generally three. Petioles from half an inch to an
inch long, erect. Leaves divided into three or five segments, pale underneath.
Leaflets lobed laterally, deeply cleft and incised. Peduncle
an inch or an inch and a half long, erect, pubescent. Corolla consisting
of five or seven petals, white or peach-blossom red. Anthers small,
straw-yellow. Filaments same colour, very slender and delicate. Pistils
and germ greenish. Specimens are occasionally met with which
are only three-leaved, but they are generally five-leaved—and more
seldom specimens occur with but two leaves. Grows in rich, shady
woods, and near the margins of rivulets, in damp rich soils, throughout
the United States; flowering in the early part of May.
This delicate little plant is very ornamental to our copses and
shady woods, in the spring of the year. Though it bears but a single
blossom red or white flower, the plant is so abundant where it grows,
increasing by its roots as well as seeds, that it besprinkles the
ground for rods together with its flowers. It has been confounded
with the A. nemorosa of Europe, from which Muhlenburg considered
it specifically distinct, giving it the name quinquefolia, and
the plant here figured is the one standing under the same name in
his catalogue and herbarium. From the assertion of Pursh, that
“ the variety ja. (the present plant,) can never be considered as a
species, as there are intermediate varieties between them”—I have
been led for many years past to examine hundreds of specimens