Fragments From Floyd

Anemonella thalictroides ~ Rue Anemone or Windflower (Image mislabeled as Wood Anemone--see errata.) The first time I saw this pure white member of the buttercup family growing in perfusion was in the Smokies. The occasion was the annual Wildflower Pilgrimage. Newly married and cheated of a real honeymoon by the first day of my first year of graduate school, Ann and I both went on a Systematic Botany class field trip to Gatlinburg.

I grew up in the pine woods of central Alabama and frankly, I did not pay much attention to plants until my eleventh hour conversion to botany late in my undergrad years. When for the first time I saw the incredible diversity and abundance of flowering plants in the rich coves of the Smoky Mountains, I was hooked on the study of plant life. When I tried to photograph them along the Little Pigeon River with our clunky peel-off Polaroid and the small white Anemone blossoms came back as vague tiny white dots, I was hooked on SLR photography. From my grad student stipend of $200 a month, I paid $200 for my first Minolta and a set of screw-in close-up lenses.

That camera went everywhere with me for thirty years. When I press the shutter on the new digital SLR, part of the joy of that sound and feel is the memory of my old friend, the Minolta--held and worn by the hands of the boy and the man, a window on the world of color and light. There is something special about our first loves, don't you agree?

Errata: Thirty years is a long time. I had written this post thinking the plant pictured was true Wood Anemone, but something didn't seem exactly right in the fog of memory. Newcombe's Field Guide set me straight. I'll forgive myself this near-error: the two plants, Anemone and Rue Anemone, are close enough in appearance (except for the leaves) that even the genus names are almost the same... Anemone and Anemonella.