Rue Anemone

At first, I misidentified this plant as liverleaf. The name liverleaf did not seem nearly as beautiful as these delicate little wildflowers that grow in my woods, so I was pleased to find out that is not what they are called after all. What we have here is  rue anemone. 

Others have also been confused about the identification. Linnaeus called the rue anemone Anemone thalictroides  in 1753. But by 1839, Edouard Spach decided that this flower was so special that it needed a genus all its own: Anemonella , because of its diminutive size. Botanists now consider the rue anemone’s classification as Anemonella thalictroides or thalictrum thalictroides. But it does have a lot in common with other anemones, and it is easy to get confused.

For instance. there is also something called a “false rue anemone” that looks just like it, only has bigger plants with more flowers and slightly different leaves. Another name for the rue anemone is windflower.  That’s pretty confusing, because Thalictrum thalictroides  has more than one English name to go with it, and also more than one Latin name: anemonella thalictroides and thalictrum thalictroides.  With so many different names, it is hard to keep all this straight!

However, if we keep our focus on the plant, and not on what different people call it, I think we can identify some unique attributes. In the picture below, you can see that the reproductive portion of the flower consists of a green and yellow array.  If you notice the green part in the center, that is what will eventually develop into seed pods.

As the white petals drop off, the green part in the center begins to form a distinctive geometrical shape.

The leaves are three-lobed and  remain in evidence long after the flower and seed pod have gone.

In my woods this time of year there is always lots of wind, and the rue anemone does like to dance in  that wind. Maybe that is one reason for calling it a windflower.

You can look closely at both the seed pod and the leaves.

Because the leaves are three lobed, it is easy to confuse this with the round-lobed hepatica, or liverleaf, but the lobes in the liverleaf are rounder and more separate, whereas here the lobes look as if they are just trying to separate, but are still part of a single leaf. It is like the webbed toes of certain animals that seem to want to be separate toes but have not quite made it.

If you want to see how very, very small this plant is, you can compare it to my hand.

The problem of genetic classification is one that is preoccupying me these days in regard to linguistics as well. When viewed separately, each flower seems unique and distinct. But when  we start to compare them based on similarities and shared features, it can get pretty confusing. I think even seasoned botanists may still have some question about the correct classification of this very beautiful wildflower.