☙ Adonis ☠︎

The Autumnal, or Common Adonis, has usually a red flower; but there is a variety of this species, of which the flowers are lemon-coloured. It is a native of most parts of the south of Europe; in Germany it grows wild among the corn; as it does, according to Gerarde, in the west of England. It is very common in some parts of Kent, particularly on the banks of the Medway,—a water-nymph, according to Spenser, famous for her flowers.

This flower owes its classical name to Adonis, the favourite of Venus: some say its existence also; maintaining that it sprung from his blood, when dying. It is likely that the name arose from confounding it with the anemone, which it resembles. There are, however, other flowers which lay claim to this illustrious origin; the larkspur is one, but the claim is too weak to be generally allowed. Moschus has conferred this distinction on the rose. Others, again, trace its pedigree to the tears which Venus shed upon her lover's body; and Gerarde would persuade us that these tears gave birth to the Venice-mallow : but the anemone has pretty generally established her descent from both parents.—See Anemone.

The name of the beautiful huntsman, in his living capacity, however, applies well enough; for the Adonis is handsome and ruddy, and an enemy to the corn; but the flower is not so hardy as its godfather, and must be sheltered from the frosts of winter.

The Autumnal Adonis is an annual, and the seeds sown in spring will flower in October. If some of the seeds are sown in September they will blow early in June. As the flowers open sooner or later in proportion to their exposure to the sun, a little attention to their arrangement will insure a longer succession of them. The seeds should be sown two or three in a pot, half an inch deep. During the severity of the winter, the pots should be housed ; but in mild weather they should stand in the open air. In dry weather they should be occasionally, but sparingly, watered, just enough to preserve them from drought.

Fable tells us that Adonis stained with his blood the flower that bears his name, and hence it has been made the emblem of sorrowful remembrances.

Some poets make this flower symbolical of the chase, in allusion to Adonis's love of hunting.

That this flower owes its name to the favourite of Venus, is not to be disputed; but whether the Goddess of Beauty changed her lover into this plant, or the Anemone, would be difficult to decide,— since the Linnsean system of dividing plants into families, did not exist when the Gods and Goddesses made lovecourted each other upon earth: and previous to the time of the Swedish botanist, the Adonis was considered to be one of the Anemonies, which it greatly resembles, and is of the same class and order.

Flos (L) a flower, a bloom, a blossom.

    Look, in the garden, blooms the Flos Adonis,
    And memory keeps of him who rashly died,
    Thereafter changed by Venus, weeping, to this flower.
   —Anonymous. Garland of Flora.

Ovid certainly designates the Anemone, as being the subject of this metamorphosis:

  "Then on the blood, sweet nectar she bestows,
    The scented blood in little bubbles rose:
    Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly,
    Borne by the winds along a low'ring sky.
    Short time ensu'd, till where the blood was shed,
    A flower began to rear its purple head:
    Such as on punic apples is reveal'd,
    Or in the filmy rind but half conceal'd.

    Still here the fate of lovely forms we see,
    So sudden fades the sweet Anemone.
    Their sickly beauties droop and pine away.
    The winds forbid the flow'rs to flourish long,
    Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song."
    Eusden's Ovid.

Great quantities of the Adonis Autumnalis are annually carried to the London market, and sold by the name of Red Morocco and Pheasant's Eye. And, in the time of Gerard, (a surgeon, and famous herbalist in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, chief gardener to William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, who was himself a great lover of plants, and had the best collection of any nobleman in the kingdom,) the country people called it "Red Camomile" — the London women, " Rosearubie." It is an annual, flowering from May to October. Its characters are, that the calyx is a five leaved perianthium, and the leaflets are obtuse, concave, a little coloured and deciduous; the corolla has from five to fifteen, but most commonly eight, — oblong, obtuse, shining, petals. The stamina consist of very short filaments, and the anthersc are oblong and inflex: the pistulum has numerous germs collected in a head, no styles, and acute reflex stigmas: no pericarpium; an oblong, spiked receptacle: seeds numerous, irregular, angular.

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