Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: June to August.

Seed-time: July to September.

Range: Nova Scotia and Maine to Manitoba and Minnesota, southward to the Carolinas and Kansas. Habitat: Upland meadows and pastures, borders of woods, and fence rows; waste places.

A tall, hairy plant which is rejected by grazing animals, either as hay or as green forage. Stem two to three feet high, with a few tufted leaves at its base and a whorl of three involucral leaves at the base of its flower-stalks. Base-leaves broader than long, three-parted, the segments broadly wedge-shaped and again cut into pointed and sharply toothed lobes; they are softly hairy and have prominent veins and long, slender petioles. The three involucral leaves have short petioles and are also three-parted, the lateral segments twice and the middle one thrice divided, and sharply toothed. If the plant bears but one flower, its peduncle is leafless, but usually there are several lateral stalks and these have a two-leaved, short-petioled involucel at the middle. Flowers a half-inch to an inch broad, without petals but having five greenish white sepals surrounding a thick central tuft of many yellow stamens and awl-shaped styles. Seed-heads oblong, cylindric, about threefourths of an inch long and half as thick; achenes flattened, pointed by the withered styles, and densely woolly, which makes them easy to be distributed by the wind. (Fig. 110.)

Fig. 110. - Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana). X 1/4.

Means Of Control

Prevent formation of seed by cutting or pulling while in early bloom. Cultivation of the ground at once destroys the weed.