Narcissus anemone

Anemone narcissiflora, the narcissus-flowered anemone, is a tufted perennial herb of the family Ranunculaceae growing 15-60 cm tall from a short stout rootstock with thick fibrous roots, distributed across the cold-temperate and arctic Northern Hemisphere from the mountains of Europe through Siberia to Alaska and the Yukon. Several silky-hairy stems rise from a basal rosette of long-petioled leaves that are palmately divided into 3-5 deeply cleft segments, each segment again cut into narrow lanceolate ultimate lobes 2-5 mm wide, giving the foliage a finely dissected appearance. The flowering stem bears a single whorl of three sessile involucral leaves resembling the basal leaves, from which arises a terminal umbel of 3-8 long-pedicelled flowers. Each flower is 1.5-3 cm across with 5-6 petaloid sepals that are white or cream-white above and often flushed pink, blue or purple beneath, surrounding a central boss of numerous yellow stamens and a green head of carpels. The fruit is a flattened, broadly winged achene 6-10 mm long with a short hooked beak, dispersed by wind. It inhabits alpine meadows, tundra slopes, rocky scree and snow-flushes on calcareous and basic soils.