It’s believed that the name anemone comes from Greek and means, ‘daughter of the wind’. In Greek mythology, anemones sprang from the blood of Adonis upon his death. When he died, Aphrodite spread nectar over Adonis’s blood, and voila, Anemone. Leave it to mythology to give a morbid explanation for a beautiful flower. Some doubt that anemone actually means daughter of the wind and contend that it’s merely a corruption of the root of Adonis’s Semitic name, Adonai.

You can thank Adonis for these

I’ll leave that for someone else to figure out. Whatever dispute exists over the name, we do know some things for sure. There are approximately 120 varieties (or species) of the anemone genus, and you can find them in Europe, North America, and Japan. Different species of anemones will flower in the spring, summer, and fall, and are most commonly shades of red, blue, or purple in color. Wikipedia describes the coloring as ‘crimson, scarlet, blue, purple and white,’ which to a colorblind person means, ‘red, blue, and white’.

I believe our anemones are the Anemone coronaria or ‘poppy anemone’. When reading about poppy anemones, I discovered yet another possible name origin. This one seemed pretty convincing, so I’ll fill you in. The Sumerian god of food and vegetation was named Tammuz. Why is that important? Because it’s generally believed that the Greeks adopted the story of Tammuz as the story of Adonis. Tammuz was known to Phoenicians as ‘Nea’man’, and it’s from that name where anemone originates. Poppy anemones grow wild in some of the oldest parts of the civilized world, so I’ll give the nod to the oldest story.

Phew. That was a lot more Sumerian and Phoenician research than I thought I was going to do today. Hope you enjoyed learning a little something more about anemones. And thanks to wikipedia for helping me learn about anemones.

-Chris