Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Anemone canadensis L.
- Family: Buttercup (Ranunculaceae)
- Flowering: May-July
- Field Marks: The distinguishing features of this Anemone are the sessile, leaf-like bracts that subtend the flowers, the white sepals, and the flat, broadly winged achenes.
- Habitat: Meadows, moist thickets, along shores.
- Habit: Perennial herb from slender rhizomes.
- Stems: Upright, much branched, slender, white-hairy, up to 2 feet tall, bearing a cluster of leafy bracts and flowers at the top.
- Leaves: Basal leaves deeply 3-parted, with each part lobed or sharply toothed, up to 6 inches long and up to 6 inches wide, with a long stalk; stem leaves at base of flower cluster actually are bracts that are similar to basal leaves but sessile.
- Flowers: Borne singly at tip of long stalks, each subtended by small, sessile, leaf-like bracts, white, up to 2 inches across.
- Sepals: 5, white, free from each other, oblong to obovate, sometimes unequal in size, up to 1 inch long.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: Numerous.
- Pistils: Numerous, with superior ovaries.
- Fruits: Many achenes crowded into a spherical head 3/4-1 inch in diameter, each achene flat, orbicular, with appressed hairs, 1/6-1/4 inch long, with a straight or curved beak 1/10-1/4 inch long, with appressed hairs.
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