Wood Anenome

Anemone quinquefolia flowers in early spring, and is classified in the Buttercup family. I noticed the flower pictured in the photo as it was just getting ready to open, towards the end of May in our neck of the woods. Typical bloom time is April – June.

Leaves, stems and stalks are all covered in fine hairs. Leaves are toothed towards the tip, wedge-shaped at their base with a very short stalk. Leaf color can vary from bright green to deep purplish; as the darker variation in the photo shows. The whole arrangement is quite elaborate! Look beneath the mid leaves in the photo, and you can see a main stem rising from the ground until it meets with the whorl of 3 leaves. Each leaf in the whorl of 3 consists of 3 distinct leaflets coming from a very short (to no) stalk. Some of the leaflets are so deeply lobed that it can deceptively seem like more, but there are just 3 leaflets each. From the center of this whorl rises the hairy flower stalk supporting a single flower. Exhibiting typical Buttercup family behavior, flowers consist of sepals (not petals) — 4 to 9 of them to be exact! (This variation in ‘petal’ count is very similar to another spring flower, the starflower.) Wood anemone flowers are usually white, but can be pink. All flowers present many white-tipped stamens arising from their centers.