The Joyful Botanist: With flowers like these, who needs an enemy?
Thimbleflowers are found throughout the mountains and the piedmont and are often seen along roadsides, field edges and open meadows. Adam Bigelow photo
The full light of the summer solstice arrives and aligns with the vegetative growth period of mid-summer. Spring wildflowers have passed at all but the highest elevations, and only the earliest summer flowers have started to bloom.
Most plants are busy gathering solar rays and putting on new leaves and new growth, building the energy needed to later make flowers, fruits and seeds.
A common early summer bloom that I find subtly beautiful is thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana), or as I like to call it, thimbleflower. I’ve begun swapping the word flower for weed in native plants as I think it helps people to understand and appreciate them better.
It can also help people know which plants to pull and which to leave when looking for weeds in a garden. Flowers are “good” and weeds are “bad” so why not reframe native plants into the positive? I also add the word weed to invasive plants that are actually problematic in the ecosystem, so that we get privet weed (Ligusticum spp.), multiflora rose weed (Rosa multiflora), and kudzu weed (Pueraria montana).
Thimbleflowers are found throughout the mountains and piedmont of North Carolina and are often seen along roadsides, field edges and open meadows. It can grow up to two and a half feet tall, and often stands out among the other flowers and grasses in a field. There are clumps of sharply lobed leaves at the base of the plant, and a cluster of similar leaves about half-way up the stalk. These leaf shapes give this plant away as a member of the buttercup family (Ranunculacea), most of which have palmately lobed leaves often with spots on them.
The flowers of thimbleflower stand another foot or so taller than the whorl of leaves on the stem. They have five white petals surrounding yellow stamens that ring around a pale green pistil. I find these simple flowers beautiful, especially as they are unfurling as shown in the picture with this article. Their delicate white petals fold around each other looking shy and fragile.
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But flower petals aren’t really fragile. Plants will tend to hold onto petals until the flowers are pollinated, and there is no longer a need to attract insects. Until then, these seemingly flimsy flower parts will hang on through stormy winds.
Once pollinated and the petals have fallen off, the reason for this plant’s common name becomes apparent. The ripening fruit takes on the look of a thimble. This structure often persists on the plant throughout the growing season and even through the winter, giving it an attractive appearance when growing in a mass, or drift.
The genus name “Anemone” comes from ancient Greek word for windflower, which literally translates to “daughter of the wind.” They were the Greek gods of wind collectively known as the “Anemoi” and were made up of Boreus, the north wind; Notus, the south wind; Euros, the east wind; and Zephyrus the wind of the west.
Although the full scientific name of this plant is Anemone virginiana, these winds don’t just blow in Virginia; they can be found throughout the Carolinas. Plants were often given names based on geography because that is the first place that European botanists found them growing. Hence, we get plants with specific epithets like caroliniana, pensylvanica, virginiana and even the oddly derived novaborascencis which somehow means New York.
No matter where the wind blows you this year, if you’re on the east coast, look for the thimbleflower blowing in the breeze. It won’t keep your fingers from being pricked, however. No matter if it’s growing by Adam’s-needles (Yucca filamentosa), Spanish-needles (Bidens bipinnata) or even the Devil’s darning needles (Clematis virginiana).
(The Joyful Botanist leads weekly wildflower walks most Fridays and offers consultations and private group tours through Bigelow’s Botanical Excursions. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
