Anemone coronaria.
The Poppy or Crown anemone it is the type species for the genus.
It is grown as a garden plant or for cut flowers.
A perennial plant up to around 50 cm high, it grows from tubers.
Leaves are divided into 3 leaflets that can be deeply lobed giving a feathery appearance.
Each hairy inflorescence stem has a single terminal flower.
The 3 leaf-like bracts under each flower get further from it as the stem grows.
The flowers are up to 8 cm across and have 5 or 8 petaloid tepals.
Tepal colours include red, white, purple and blue.
Red ones may develop a white area on the tepal bases forming a ring.
The centre of the flower has many dark blue to black stamens.
Inside the stamens are the many similarly coloured carpels.
The centre may be a pale green in flowers with white tepals.
The stamens and carpels are on a mound formed by an enlarged receptacle.
(The receptacle is that part of the stem above the insertion of the perianth.)
With many carpels each flower can produce up to 300 seeds.
There are many cultivars with flowers up to 10 cm across on long stems.
Each plant can have around a dozen inflorescence stems.
Flowers can be singles, semi-doubles or doubles.
They come in a wide range of pastel and bright colours except yellows.
Some are bi-coloured.
J.F.
