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WINDFLOWERS.

[Illustration:  FLOWERS OF ANEMONE DECAPETALA (Natural Size).]

The genus Anemone has a great future.  Even at present its popularity is only a little less than that of roses and daffodils, but when we trust to seeds as a means of reproducing the best of windflowers instead of buying dried roots from the shops, then, and then only, will “coy anemone” become a garden queen.  A. coronaria, if treated as an annual, furnishes glowing blossoms from October until June, after which A. dichotoma and A. japonica in all its forms—­white and rosy—­carry on the supply and complete the cycle of a year’s blossoming.  By sowing good, newly-saved seed in succession from February until May in prepared beds out of doors, the common crown anemone may in many sunny, sheltered gardens be had in bloom all the year round.  This is saying a great deal, but it is true; indeed, it is questionable if we have any other popular garden flower which is at once so showy, so hardy, and so continuous in its blossoming.  A friend beside me says:  “Ah! but what of violas?” To which I reply:  “Grow both in quantity, since both are as variable as they are beautiful.”  But when viola shrinks in foggy November from the frost demon, anemone rises Phoenix-like responsive to the first ray of sunshine.  Besides, fair Viola, richly as she dresses in velvet purple or in golden sheen, has not yet donned that vivid scarlet robe which Queen Anemone weareth, nor are her wrappers of celestial azure so pure; and blue is, as we all know, the highest note of coloring in floral music.  But comparisons are not required, Anemones are variable and beautiful enough to be grown for themselves alone.  No matter whether we look at a waving mass of sparkling windflowers in a vineyard or cornfield by the Mediterranean, or walk knee deep among the silvery stars of A. nemorosa in an English wood—­“silvery stars in a sea of bluebells”—­they are alike satisfying.  I believe that there is any amount of raw material in the genus Anemone—­hardihood, good form and habit, and coloring alike delicate and brilliant; and what we now want is that amateurs should grow them with the attention and care that have been lavished upon roses and lilies and daffodils.  But, alas! we have some capricious beauties in this group.  A. coronaria and some other species succeed well treated as seedling hardy annuals, and others, as A. apennina, A. Robinsoni, A. Pulsatilla, A. dichotoma, and A. japonica, may be multiplied ad infinitum by cuttings of the root.  It is when we come to the aristocratic Alpine forms, to A. alpina, A. sulphurea, A. narcissiflora, etc., that difficulties alike of propagation and of culture test our skill to the uttermost.  Tourists fond of gardens walk over these plants in bloom every year; they dig up roots and send them home; but they are as yet very rare in even the best of gardens.  Nor is it easy to