Tall Anemone.Anemone Virginiana.
Found during July and August in meadows, roadsides, and woods.
The single stalk usually forks midway for the flowers; it grows between 2 and 3 feet high, and is slender and slightly rough to the touch. In color it is light green.
The compound leaf is 3-divided, the middle leaflet being 3-parted, and the side leaflets 2-parted; the margins are notched, and the fibre is tough, while the surface is rough-hairy; the color is green. The leaves grow in a whorl of 3 about the stalk.
The flower is a shallow cup, composed of 5 petal-like calyx-parts, hollowed like shells, of a greenish-white color; the pistils are many, rising in a cylindrical greenish head in the center; the stamens are numerous, and pale. The flowers are set on long slender stems which rise from the whorl of leaves; these stems often fork again at half their length, where in that case, they bear a pair of small leaves, from which the 2, or more, secondary flower-bearing stems arise.
Less gregarious than its early sister, the Tall Anemone grows solitary, or in twos and threes,—frequently beside an old stump. The cylindrical or elongated head turns brown and becomes cottony when the seeds are ripe. The tall elegance of this plant is noteworthy; it bears its leaves, flowers and seeds with an air of distinction, and the long wand-like stems suggest the strings of some musical instrument on which the wind may play, according to the old tradition that the Anemones love to bloom when the wind blows.