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Anemone meaning

General information on the Anemone

Belonging to the Ranunculaceae family, the Anemones come from South Africa and South America. They are brightly colored flowers ranging from shades of white to pink, blue, purple and red. They are very delicate flowers, which bloom for a short time, but thanks to their great variety, they are used for numerous decorative purposes. They do not have a particularly intense scent, but on the other hand they have colors that make them really effective. Some species of Anemones are used in phytotherapy as they can be obtained above all sedatives and contain a weakly poisonous substance, protanemonin, which can be irritating to mucous membranes and skin, but which becomes harmless with drying, transforming into anemonin. Being fragile flowers, they require very specific atmospheric and soil conditions, in fact they need shading, fresh and light soil, acid or neutral. The Anemones generally bloom in the intermediate seasons, times of the year when the climate is more temperate, and they grow by division into clumps or by root cutting. They are used as a floral decoration because of great visual impact.

The meaning of the Anemone

Also called «flower of the wind» for the fragility and delicacy of its petals, the Anemone is a flower with a somewhat melancholy meaning because it recalls abandonment, regret but also the hope of recovering a lost love. The meaning of the Anemone lies in the shortness of the duration of its flowering, so it recovers a metaphorical meaning of fleetingness of a beautiful thing, of an intense moment or of a positive emotion. The singular beauty of the flower is associated with the concept of fleeting hope and expectation, but also with a love that ended too soon, so its intrinsic symbolism is almost of resignation to a near end of a beautiful but brief feeling. In the Christian tradition it is said that the Anemone was born from drops of blood fallen from the crucified feet of Jesus,

The meaning of the Anemone in Greek mythology

Like every flower, the Anemone also has its place in the Greek mythology that narrates its birth. According to legend, Anemone was a nymph of extreme beauty of the court of Chloris, to the point of making both Boreas and Zephyr fall in love with her at the same time. Chloris, annoyed by so much attention and by the continuous rivalry between the two suitors, whose struggles unleashed storms and continuous storms, decided to punish her by transforming her into a flower, but the harshness of her punishment was the eternal and cyclical perpetuation of her destiny to unfold in short times, undergoing the cold north wind Borea that scattered its delicate petals in the air, arriving already withered and withered at the first spring winds of Zephyr, thus never being able to be linked to either of them. This is why it is said that the Anemone is so delicate that a gust of wind is enough to blow it away. According to another legend narrated by Ovid, however, the Anemone derives from the death of Adonis, killed by a boar. Venus, desperately loving him, wept for him by pouring a magical substance on the blood of the beloved, from whose body the flower was born. Even in mythology, the Anemone is the flower of abandonment.

Anemone meaning: The symbolism of the Anemone

Symbol of transience and ephemeral life, the meaning of the Anemone has even come to represent a flower with which to remember the dead. In fact, due to the ease with which a simple breath of wind can tear away the petals, the Anemone also symbolizes abandonment and illness, imprinting itself with a meaning as melancholy as it is delicate. Often used to adorn tombs even in ancient civilizations, its Greek name which in fact means «wind» but also «breath», is aligned with the meaning of short life and soul, understood as the vital breath of a living being. For a deformation of the word itself, «soul» becomes «animal», that is «living being that breathes», for which the Anemone is also associated with the act of breathing at the basis of life. The essence of anemones lies in the fragility of their corolla which is easily lost under the lashing of the last cold spring winds, also symbolizing the fleetingness of ephemeral feelings. For this reason, an Anemone can be a tacit message to be sent to a lost person to say «come back», but it can even be destined for relatives or friends because it is not necessarily linked to love.