Most flowers ask you to look at the petals. The anemone makes you look at the hole in the middle.
Anemones are cool-season flowers with wide, single-layer petals and a dark, densely packed centre. Florists use them for contrast: one anemone in a soft arrangement does the work of a full stop in a long sentence. They are at their best in Australia through winter and early spring, and every part of the plant is harmful if eaten.
What is an anemone?
Anemone is a genus in the Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family, which makes it a close relative of both the ranunculus and the delphinium. The one you meet at a florist is usually Anemone coronaria, the poppy anemone, grown from a small knobbly corm.
What people read as the flower's "petals" are technically sepals, and what reads as a black centre is a tight boss of stamens ringing a dark disc. That structure is the whole reason to use it. Nearly every other spring flower is layered and soft. The anemone is flat, graphic and high-contrast, so it reads clearly from across a room.
What does the anemone mean?
Anemone symbolism pulls in two directions, which is unusually honest for a flower. In Greek myth it springs from the blood of Adonis, so it carries loss, and the name comes from anemos, the wind, giving it a sense of something brief. Victorian flower language linked it to anticipation and to protection against ill will.
In practice it reads as intensity rather than sweetness. It is a good flower for a message with some weight behind it, and a poor one for a purely cheerful note.
Anemone colour meanings
- Red: love with an edge to it. The most dramatic and the most photographed.
- White: sincerity and clarity, and the version that sits most easily in white flowers.
- Purple and blue: protection and depth. The rarest, and the one florists fight over.
- Pink: softer, but the dark centre keeps it from turning sentimental.
When are anemones in season in Australia?
Anemones are a cool-season crop. Australian supply generally runs through winter and into spring, with the strongest colour range in the middle of that window. They arrive alongside the other spring blooms and disappear once the weather warms properly.
Availability moves week to week with the grower and the market, so a studio will substitute when the right stems are not there.
One anemone in a soft arrangement does the work of a full stop in a long sentence.
How to care for cut anemones
Anemones drink hard and keep growing after cutting, which surprises people. A stem can gain two or three centimetres in the vase, so an arrangement that looked settled on Monday will have rearranged itself by Wednesday.
- Recut the stems and use a clean vase with shallow, fresh water. Anemone stems are soft and rot quickly in deep water.
- Change the water every day or two. They foul it faster than most flowers.
- Expect movement. The stems reach toward light and lengthen, so plan for a looser shape rather than a tight dome.
- Keep them cool. Heat closes the season on them quickly.
- They open in daylight and close at night, which is normal, not a fault.
The general principles are in our guide to keeping flowers alive longer.
Are anemones toxic to pets?
Yes. Like others in the buttercup family, Anemone is listed by the Royal Horticultural Society as harmful if eaten, and the sap can irritate skin. Keep the vase out of reach of cats, dogs and children, wash your hands after handling the stems, and call a vet or doctor if you suspect any has been eaten. If you have animals at home, our note on plants that are toxic to pets is worth reading first.
How to use anemones well
The mistake is treating an anemone as a filler. It is a punctuation flower. Three of them in a bouquet of twenty stems will do more than fifteen will, because the effect depends on the dark centre being a surprise rather than a pattern.
They pair best with something layered and pale, so the flat face has something to sit against. That is why they turn up so often in wedding flowers through the cooler months. If you are planning a wedding for this season, our Australian spring wedding flowers guide covers where they fit.
If it is the drama you are after.
Prague works the same contrast, deep crimson against blush, from $129. Shop Prague →
Sources: Royal Horticultural Society, potentially harmful garden plants.
