Canadian Anemone
Sam and I were back at the old beaver dam in the woods on June 29, 2025. The beavers had moved on and the dam had broken, leaving exposed flats that used to be underwater. And growing there were several of these good-sized brilliant white flowers. Aside from being 5-petaled and white with yellow anthers, the flowers didn’t have many identifying features. The leaves, though were deeply toothed and had a distinctive shape.
Each plant just had the one blossom, at least the ones we could see.
An online image search initially turned up the Wood Anemone as a match, but that was obviously wrong because the Wood Anemones (Anemone nemorosa) blossoms had six petals, not five. A better match is the Canadian Anemone[1], Anemone canadensis, which has five petals and the correct leaf shape.
I don’t think I’ve seen these before, but they are a native wildflower, not an invasive. That said, it is apparently a reasonably common garden flower these days. They are quite nice, and it will be interesting to see how much they colonize the former wetland around the old beaver dam in coming years.
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[1] As a kid, I had learned about “Sea Anemones” long before I ever saw the terrestrial flowers that the sea creatures were named after. So, naturally, I assumed that the anemone flower would have long, tentacular petals. I know I’ve seen flowers along those lines, like chrysanthemums and dahlias, and there is at least one whose name escapes me that looks almost exactly like sea anemones. Meanwhile, anemone blossoms have simple flat petals and definitely do not look like that. So, what on earth was the person who named the sea creatures thinking?
Beautiful!