Name: Windflower (Anemone pulsatilla)
Otherwise known as: Pasque Flower, Pulsatilla
Habitat: A thick-rooted member of the Ranunculaceae family, growing up to 45cm in calcareous soils in Europe and the Mediterranean. The plant has feathery leaves covered in long hairs that grow in rosettes around the thin stem that terminates in a purple flower.
The plant is named after the god of the wind: Anemos. Pliny the Elder affirmed that the flower only opened when the March winds blew. Greek mythology attributes the plant to the death of the mortal Adonis, who was killed in a fit of jealous rage by Ares, god of war, who transformed himself into a gigantic boar and gored Adonis to death; there is a plaque recording this event just outside the town of Dali. Aphrodite, the lover of Adonis took up his body and where his blood fell, the Anemone grew: ‘Where streams his blood there blushing springs a rose, and where a tear has dropped a windflower grows’.
The Egyptians considered the plant an emblem of sickness, and the Chinese call it the Flower of Death. In some European countries the peasantry considered it a flower presaging ill omen. The Romans plucked the first flowers of spring and wore them as a garland against fevers.
Windflower, when fresh, contains the glycoside Anemonin and Anemonic acid, the former is responsible for any fatalities that have arisen and also is attributed with rare cases of gangrene, when the skin has been breached. Windflower poisoning in many ways replicates the action of Aconite, causing paralysis of the central nervous system and collapse of the respiratory tracts. The toxins dissipate in the plant when dried.
Culpeper advises the roots be chewed because it ‘purgeth the head mightily, and when all is done, all the pills in the dispensary purge not the head like hot things held in the mouth’. Gerard recommended a bath taken in Anemone flowers and leaves to cure leprosy. Mediaeval herbalists used the plant to treat headaches, rheumatics and gout.
Modern herbalists and homeopaths use it to treat painful conditions of the male and female reproductive system, such as dysmenorrhoea, orchitis and prostatis. It is also used to treat hyperactivity, insomnia, nervous tension and stress.
Next dangerous plant Levant Nut
