Wild anemones - Palmate Anemone

Now that spring comes (though for many of you is middle of the winter), more and more of those little flowers will pop. They start early here, some bloom through the winter. They have few months to open the flowers and produce seeds before the summer heat comes and dries everything to crisp.

Anemone palmata

Also called Yellow Anemone, even though they do come in white as well. Native to Mediterranean region and quite common around wild areas, trees, pines and cork oaks.

I found this one quite close to the ocean shore where the soil is already very sandy (you can see it on the photos) with majority of tall pines and some bushes.





It is a perennial plant with thick rhizome hidden deep in the ground. The plant goes fully dormant during the hot summer months and all the water and nutrients stored in the rhizome will help it survive.
New growing season starts in the fall, around November, when the temperatures drop. Flowering starts in early spring, even as early as February, to reach it's peak in April. There might be second blooming in the fall, but it is not as abundant as the spring one.

I didn't manage to catch the seeds. If they are as fluffy as the ones I grew, it could be some cool thing to shoot. Hopefully one day.

So different and much smaller than the garden anemones we can get in various colours. But that leaf collar on the flower stem is something they both have.

The leaves are also more round and stay closer to the round. I used to grow some of the popular ones in a pot and I loved how bushy the leaves could get. Again they were much larger and growing higher from the ground.